House on slope / 2017

The house on the slope sounds good. It also looked pretty cool on the map. The plot was large, with a fairly wide front. A sharp slope – this gives a solution for picturesque solutions, developed area, good access from the center of Bielsko-Biała. Maybe the northern exposure was not optimal, but you can always deal with it.
We went to the site. We reached the plot, looked around, looked at each other and we have the same thought. Like our beloved Silesian Beskids, it was a spatial ruin. Buildings on the opposite side to our site was a mixture or mess of all the architectural typologies known. Each house with its sloping roof, different plaster colors, accidental wall cladding, sheds, and garages, you name it. It was irreversible chaos.

If only it was a little further, but from this distance you could see all the “architectural” details.

Perpendicular or parallel to the slope?

In the parallel option, there would be a smaller difference between the slope levels bordering the building from above and below. Also, the windows are exposed to the north – the view described above and to the south – the road and “PUMu temples”. While building perpendicularly, we would have a significant elevation, but we run away from the road and get the exposure east-west, and here the view is quite good from the east, a distant panorama of Bielsko, and from the west a hill covered with forest. Entrance and parking – straight to the first floor. Then the stairs to the living room at the garden level.

In the end, the house consists of four 9x9m squares, two squares per floor. From the north, the garage square and the entrance under which another square almost completely embedded in the ground housing technical rooms and the den of the owner including office, gym and music room. To the south is the bedroom square, which hangs above the living room fully glazed east and west – the fourth square. The terrace next to the living room, slightly embedded in the mass of the building, is additionally protected from the road by the entrance footbridge located on the upper floor providing complete privacy.

Since half of the lower level is a reinforced concrete box recessed in the ground, the entire ground floor is designed from raw concrete with formwork imprints. Concrete perfectly complements natural wood. The upper level and roof are one homogeneous mass covered with titanium-zinc sheets with opening finished with wood. Concrete, wood, and metal are a group of materials that fit well and age well.