Private ranch
A house in the woods
A splendid wood in the hills with slight topographical variations and three wide glades. There is a narrow access road leading to an austere building. Extensive areas of meadows with high grass. Strips of light filter through the foliage. An introspective, isolated and silent space.
There is an upper part and a lower part!
First design choice was to place the new construction in the highest clearing of the plot, in the most anthropized portion, allowing us to make new use of the access road and maintain a higher position with respect to the rest of the plot. By means of significant excavation work, the main body of the ranch is situated at an elevation of +301. Thus, the volume - half-embedded in the hillside – is outlined, where most of the complex and the ambitious functional project is housed, overlooking the large, newly constructed artificial lake. This radical preliminary choice gives us two advantages. The first one is that the main areas (core living, events area, leisure area) overlook the lake, in such a way as to establish a direct connection between the internal and external spaces and provide easy access. Furthermore, the main façades of the ranch are situated on the sunnier sides. The second advantage is the possibility to be able to locate the private apartments (master’s apartment, brother’s master apartment, guest’s apartment and master’s home office) above the foundations, on the first floor. In the upper part, therefore, a group of four blocks is built, a little “village” formed of four elongated buildings in wood and a double-pitched roof. An archetypal and minimal shape - four houses in the wood that reunify the relationship between the context and the new construction. In the lower part, there is a connection between empty and full spaces, as well as moderate alternation between the functions devoted to conviviality and socialization and the spaces merely linked to the functionality and uses of the house.
design team: GPA + EXiT architetti associati; Proap Italia (landscape);
location: Bratislava, Slovakia
client: private
year: 2011
status: private competition - 2nd prize
covered area: 3 000 sqm
structural and technical plant design:F&M ingegneria