Brzoza . Kwietowicz

House with art studio . Warsaw

Piotr Brzoza . Marcin Kwietowicz . photos: © Juliusz Sokolowski . + East-CentricArch

As we began working on the project, our goal was not to build a house on a plot, but to convert the plot to a space one could call home, an area that would exist as a work-life space for its inhabitants. The chosen concept allowed also an efficient use of current situation – deep and surrounded by walls of nearby houses.
The design is an outcome of a search for an optimal position for individual functions; the cross sections are rather reactions for its spatial context. Overlapping these two contexts created a series of interiors with a consistent geometrical logic, but different proportions and heights, sometimes surprising, due to being determined by an invisible factor.

Close neighborhood consists of very differential, small residential buildings and outbuildings consisting of both single buildings and ones placed on plot borders and frontages. The architecture we created tries to be an obvious part of this context, but with a certain touch of sovereignty. It’s supposed to be something like an abstract reflection of surrounding “everyday”, organizing it and adding some structure and value.
In this sense, the project can be taken as modern, because it differs in typology and organization from an average project in nowadays detached houses architecture, or as traditional, because it reflects nearby reality and old building tradition.

House with art studio
Marcin Kwietowicz, Piotr Brzoza, Poland, Programme, Residential
Location: Warsaw, Poland
Client: Monika Sosnowska
Architects: Piotr Brzoza –Marcin Kwietowicz
Associate architects: Grazyna Stawicka
Collaboration: Dariusz Bober, Piotr Fortuna
Structural engineering: Stefan Kowalski
Site area: 565 sq m
Footprint: 260 sq m
Effective area: 202 sq m
Total area: 260 sq m
Volume: 942 sq m
Floors: 1
Design: 2005-2007
Construction: 2006-2009