A Contemporary Styled House · 1500m²
The project the team was about to work on combined both complexity and rare architectural poetry: a picturesque site by the river, an old brick house structure, and a unique natural environment set the tone for the future composition. The architects faced the task of creating a new building organically integrated into a space where nature itself dictates the laws of form and light.
The brief we received included a picturesque site near the river and an old three-story brick house surrounded by numerous birches and pines. We were to develop a master plan for the territory and design a new house to be placed on the site of the old one, utilizing the potential of the plot and its expressive views. A specific request from the client was to preserve as many trees as possible, as they were already part of the landscape and created the unique atmosphere of the place.
The work on this project was led by Japanese architect Yusuke Takahashi. The result was architecture with graphically precise facade lines in the best traditions of minimalism, built on a clear rhythm of panoramic glazing with the dominant horizontal of multi-level roofs. One of the key challenges was placing the main public spaces of the first floor on the northern, view-oriented side, which created certain difficulties in providing natural lighting for these zones. The architect proposed an elegant solution that became not only functional but also form-defining for the building’s external appearance.
The continuous glazing of the stairwell space and the south-facing second-floor hall, complemented by a glass roof dome, created an effect of visual transparency in the central part of the house. This structure allows daylight to penetrate inside, saturating the first-floor spaces with it and providing visual connection between floors. From the entrance by the parking area, almost the entire interior space is visible all the way to the northern terrace, revealing views of the forest landscape beyond the house and enhancing the sense of perspective and depth.
Special attention was paid to the basement level: the gym receives natural lighting through double-height space penetrating through a sunken courtyard that opens views to the garden on the south side. Thanks to this, the lower level of the house feels not isolated but filled with air and connected to the surrounding nature.
The project became a successful example of how contemporary architecture can carefully interact with nature, not suppressing it but enhancing its presence. The result was a house where light, space, and landscape are united into a harmonious architectural composition.
