The project is located next to the main vehicular access to the complex and serves as both a vehicle garage and a residence for the estate’s caretaker. The terrain’s topography allows for a building with two facades, one on each of its floors; on the ground floor, there is a garage behind large gates that fully open to the access road, and on the first floor, a residence completely open to the opposite side, seeking views of the vineyards and a south-facing orientation. There is no internal communication between the two levels, which function as two separate elements protected under a single roof.

The existing building was constructed against a neighboring structure that is no longer part of the estate, and the new project disconnects from it by creating a pedestrian access between the two volumes, establishing itself as an independent piece within the constellation of architectures that populate the estate.

Text provided by the architects.

The house itself is divided into two concentric parts – the inner and the outer. The inner part is comprised of basic dwelling components and laid out on a Palladian 3×3 grid with a vertically accented dining room in its centre. The outer part consists of the additional programme – patios of different size and proportion, garage, pool and storages. It forms an in–between space, neither a house, nor a garden. It serves as a mediator between both of them.

Text provided by the architects.

Plot A
This is by far the largest plot with a length of 170m facing a main road and a
roundabout. A car can drive in a continuous movement around the entire plot from the ground floor to the rooftop. To drive down from the top, the car makes another tour around the entire building on the opposite side. The spaces change from one side to the other since half of the building almost adjoins the green corner building by Anne Holtrop.

Text provided by the architects.

The aim of this project was to invert the buildings original function both in terms of the interior space and its relation with the exterior yet without changing the volume, in order to preserve the rows uniformity. The main façade looks onto a narrow street with an even narrower pavement, with traffic going by. This façade is now reformulated as the rear one, in an attempt to open up the building onto the estate instead, both visually and with regards to its function. The upper floor has four large window bays, two of which also reach down to the ground floor, forming two patios. This means that the bedrooms can be moved downstairs, along with the wet rooms; thus, the main upper floor, which is now completely freed up, becomes a large shared space with a connection to the estate. In turn, it is presided over by a staircase crowned by the kitchen that articulates the space.

Text provided by the architect.

The plan is developed on the outer grid as a sequence of four terraces interlocking at corners to offer a new horizon for dwelling. Each terrace holds a different surface material, providing possibilities for a variety of use. The boundaries of the steel frame are constantly challenged by these alterations in material (a hanging net, sheet steel, pre-cast concrete, the open frame) or through the performance of its movable elements. These allow the house to undergo a total transformation of scale and atmosphere.

The opaque wall facing the central interior space is made of 10 large pivoting steel doors, allowing the living area to shift from a singular indoor space of 50 square metres to embrace the 156 square metre volumes of the four outdoor terraces. The large stretch of glass on the southern facade of the frame extends the living space to the rise of the distant hills. The customised sun shading closes this expanse, giving a singular interior space, discretely partitioned by a series of floor to ceiling full-length curtains defining the sleeping area from the kitchen, dining, sitting, and bathroom. In its open state, the main living is one in plan, dedicating the entire space to a single program if desired. The house inverts the priority of building a traditional protected shelter in nature, by allowing various scenarios of exposure to nature within the building.

Every element of the house emphasises the performance of structure and space, providing either weight or lightness at specific points, expanse or contraction at others. This is exemplified in the visible joints of the main steel frame, the connections to the bearing points, the exposed bracing and raw material finish. All details are revealed. There is a kind of directness that makes the house accessible to all.

The means of making

The owner – a local craftsman working on interior refurbishments and domestic maintenance – invited TEN to design, develop and build the house. Means to the production of the house were modest, and skill was local. The owner collaborated with a metal workshop close to the site.

The central premise of the project was to include the future owner in the process of making by specifying only available local material and construction knowledge, with design decisions on durable structures and surfaces to be repaired. This challenged the norm of architecture being a complete conceptual product, delivered to the site via the client, but instead opened the process as a genuine conversation on the process of construction, the future use and practical and necessary maintenance.

The conversation identified material resources, workshop skill and capacities within the range of the immediate region. It also brought about novel solutions like the in- situ casting of the exposed concrete foundations with recycled steel sheets. The accuracy of the formwork was determined by interior joiners, the casting with a self-compacting concrete mixture developed in dialogue with local subsidiaries and contractors. This not only contributed to the local economy but through experimentation in the procedure of construction, offered new applications for local construction skills. Left exposed, this reveals the proof of labour and skill in the forces driving construction, while the formal expression demonstrates the human factor in the production of dwelling. This extends the dialogue originating from the pioneers of Yugoslavian Modernism – a movement instrumental in the transformation of society through the local adaptation of progressive technologies and self- determination in design and construction. In the same way, the making of Avala House in the form of the ideal contemporary home uses everyday materials, formed personally by the skills of local makers to create a product of regional significance.

Text provided by the architect.

It is a shared facility, encouraging the encounter of various populations living close to one another, but rarely meeting. The Restaurant, cafeteria and sports activities are made accessible to students, company employees, teachers, and researchers. It aims at creating a meeting point for everyone by mixing activities that are usually separate.

The building has been conceived as a minimal structure, using rough materials, robust and long lasting techniques. Technology is used minimally to provide a place that will last in time, without need for complicated maintenance.

In response to the low construction budget, detailing has been kept to a minimum. This economical approach has allowed for the inclusion of a generous public square in the construction price, ensuring a planted pedestrian connection with the existing academic buildings next to the site. The vertical configuration of the building provides a minimal footprint.

The main materials used in the building are glass and concrete. The glass façades are characterized by large aluminium sliding doors with triple rails. The concrete beams have been prefabricated and casted in industrial moulds, while concrete columns have been casted on site.

Text provided by the architect.

As part of a future ZAC linked to the Ecole Polytechnique, and more broadly in the next Paris – Saclay cluster, this student residence project optimizes both its urban location and its construction principles.
It takes advantage of the rationality of campus-type urban planning by proposing a compact building, whose obvious strength of lines already provides a firm foundation. The volumetry of the building is based on the rectangular footprint of the land and assumes its U-shape, which encloses the interior of the block. This interior, treated as an open-air garden, is the real lung of the project. The building can also be seen from this interior.
Rather than a building, the project should even be presented as a thrifty and equipped structure. The program brings together several distinct elements (student housing, communal living facilities, shops, public and private parking lots) but absolutely refuses to play the composite agglomeration card. On the contrary, it is rather the uniqueness of the lines and the modular rhythm of the whole that is striking. The distribution of the different programs obeys a logic of superimposition: a double-height first floor hosting the shops and the collective spaces of the student residence; two levels, ground floor+1 and ground floor+2, on a large open plateau for public parking spaces; on levels ground floor+3, ground floor+4 and ground floor+5, three levels of housing; and finally an attic level hosting the high levels of certain duplex housing units. This distribution has the advantage of offering the noblest and most unobstructed views to all the housing units, while designing a more streamlined building base. This base even plays on certain contrasting and superimposing effects: a largely transparent first floor and two parking levels above, which are much opaquer. Access to the parking lots provides another visual contrast, since it is provided by large, interlaced ramps, while being included in the volume of the building, give it another spectacular dimension.

Thought out on the scale of the car as well as that of the individual, the building seeks a path between a strictly functionalist approach and that constrained by domestic norms. Domesticity is however very present in the scansion of the roof vaults. The attic even appears as a rereading of the typology of strip houses, laid out on the terrace. The regularity of the architectural vocabulary, even its monumentality, does not, however, stem from formal a priori, but rather asserts itself as a strict and sober resolution of the complex requirements of the program. The sharpness of these structural responses also allows the building to express a plasticity, almost brutalist, where the materials (concrete structure, glass panels removable from the dwellings) are returned to a constructive necessity and a plastic expressiveness as pure as each other.

Text provided by the architect.