Description

The Nadolny house is sited within a typical accumulation of family homes thrown randomly together, slightly raised above a road junction. The architects Morger & Degelo respond to these surroundings with a discreet yet unambiguous gesture: it rejects the format of the ponderous right-angled blocks scattered around the plots. The Nadolny House’s polygonal outlines enable it to slip secretly away from this random pattern, stealing away with its evocative dynamic. Attached to the lower carport, which follows the level of the road but is equally asymmetrical, the house tries to exploit its situation and positions: a longitudinally rectangular plot provides direction and orientation.

The building, which is also long, shifts as close as it can to the northern boundary so that the living rooms can face south. Despite its unconventional outline and external appearance the Nadolny House still fits in with the neighbouring buildings in terms of scale and placing. On the south side, the living area extends across the full length of the ground floor with a corner loggia. A narrow strip of access and ancillary rooms on the north side, with doorless en­trances and connections reveals tight spatial calculation and extremely reduced spatial disposition.

This openness in its turn integrates the ancillary entrance, corridor and kitchen spaces with the living area. On the top floor, an orthogonal spatial layout of bedroom, bathroom and dressing room refuses to comply with the external polygonal outline. The area between the internal and external structure thus became a tension-filled and coherent ‘left-over space’; it can be partially closed off with sliding doors. Fluent space and ‘space-cell’ form a contradictory pair within this homogeneous timber envelope.

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Originally published in: Klaus-Peter Gast, Living Plans: New Concepts for Advanced Housing, Birkhäuser, 2005.