Luxury house with room for your fantasy
This unique house is located near our border and is a rarity among buildings. In Katowice, Poland, you can see an atypical building that leaves you unsure as to where it begins and where it ends. When looking at it, your mind start to wonder whether it is a mere illusion caused by optics or perspective, or whether the building can in large part even be grasped by reality.
Living Garden House – back to the birth of humankind
We spend all day living in a garden and at night we lock ourselves in the “cocoon” of the house. This innovative formulation is a return to our roots. The first people spent their days on earth searching for food, and hid into the crowns of trees at nightfall. The Living Garden House restores the ancient rhythm of life prescribed to human beings. It is a return in time to a natural way of life, but under present-day conditions.
A building full of exciting moments and surprises
At first glance, the house does not differ from most modern buildings designed by today’s architects and designers, but upon closer inspection, you will find that nature penetrates the house through and through. The idea for the building was obvious: nature – the garden, lawn and trees – do not need to be only around the building, but can be a part of it, while creating harmony in the overall appearance.
Owing to the unique combination of mirrored walls, sliding glass panels and transparent glass railings, the house creates an impression of endless harmony between vegetation, masses of brick, concrete and unobtrusive luxury. As a whole, it lets the force of nature speak without any embellishment, and the mirroring effect multiplies the resulting impact. By turning the top floor ninety degrees to the side and positioning it into the space of the private courtyard, the ordinary brick house becomes a building with stunning perspectives.
Yet the basic design of the building is simple – a two-storey house with a saddle roof that traces the parallel line of the street. The shape of the house and the used materials refer to the history of local peasant building construction.
The author of the house is the world-famous Polish architectural studio KWK Promes, directed by architect Robert Konieczny. The architect, graduate of the Faculty of Architecture of the Silesian Polytechnic in Gliwice, Poland, was awarded a certificate at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1996. In 1999, he became the director of KWK Promes, which was founded in the same year. Architect Robert Konieczny is the winner of the prestigious House of the Year 2006 competition, he won an award for the best residential building in the world for the Dom Aatrialnego (Atrium House) building in the contest organised by World Architecture News. In 2008, he defended his rank in the Europe 40 under 40 contest known as The European Centre for Architecture Art and Design.
