K 01 - Vacation House
Reconstruction and addition of an old family house
PROJECT YEAR: 2018-2020
STATUS: Completed
LOCATION: Siljakovac, 11000 Beograd
AREA: 120m2+60m2 terrace, plot 1300m2
CLIENT: Private commission
PHOTOGRAPHY: Relja Ivanic
AWARDS: BigSEE Architecture Award 2021
The house is located in Siljakovac, near Belgrade. The plot surface is 13 acres and it is sloping toward the southeast. The existing building, a house archetype in shape, was built around 1970. Originally it was designed with a smaller access porch, three balconies - two on a side and one central with access from dormer on the roof, and a basement garage to which leads a steep earthen ramp. In addition to the house on the plot, there were two smaller houses that were brought to ruined condition due to lack of maintenance and non-use.
The idea is to adapt the house for reuse as a weekend house for a family of five with smaller interventions and with the addition of a big terrace.
Genius loci, a house with sloping roof, has been preserved while its redesign on the ground floor has refreshed its primary architectural language. The massive structural assembly of the house provided a secure base for further interventions. By reducing the existing form to clear geometric shapes, smaller terraces, redundant elements that did not meet new needs and the central roof dormer were removed. Also, both ancillary houses in the yard were dismantled and removed from the plot.
The new motif was found in the longitudinal proportion and the asymmetry of the new terrace, which takes over the role of the former access porch and extends from the side to the slope in the full width of the house, forming an invisible volume together with the pergola. The terrace becomes the viewpoint over the parcel and orchard in its lower part. The large area of the terrace becomes a plot extension, its connection with the environment and continuous movement around the building is made possible by the front and back stairs. The construction of the terrace is a concrete slab, while the decking is a Siberian larch without additional coatings to maintain the natural appearance of the wood, which darkens under atmospheric influence.
The supporting element of the pergola is steel, while a series of angled wooden slats creates shade. The longitudinal language of the house is finally written in the wooden perimeter, which, by filling in rectangular modular fields, becomes reminiscence of the new proportion and anchors the house with the ground - it emphasize horizontality, giving priority to the nature. The openings in the terrace slab, provid way for the greenery to climb along the colums of the pergola. The idea is to replace the wooden pergola with a grapevine over time, which in a new reinterpretation will hint at a dynamic, ever-changing, green horizontal.
Access to the former garage has been altered to allow smooth movement around the house. The garage has become a workshop and parking space for lawn tractor.
Windows and doors have been replaced with a new one, with the adaptation of individual openings to a large terrace to better connect the interior of the house with the garden.
Due to the renovation of the roof, the old clay tiles on the house is lined with the new ones, while the expanded entrance porch in the form of an old brick plateau in color is connected to the colorful roof planes, forming a unity in aesthetic expression.