This house has a rather large area - about 1000 "squares", and due to its dimensions, as well as a very elongated shape and natural stone cladding, it seems really impressive. And in general, it does not look very much like a cottage - rather, it is a sculpture that affirms the most refined modernism in the landscape.
Compositionally, everything is quite simple here. The site did not have a pronounced relief or special vegetation, and was perfectly visible. And since the option of building a tall fence was not even discussed, the house itself had to act as a screen. This explains its strongly elongated shape - the architects placed the house across the site, and exactly in the middle, clearly dividing the public and private zones. It is quite predictable that rooms that are not afraid of strangers' eyes are facing the entrance, and panoramic windows of the living room, dining room and bedroom are facing the courtyard. The main open veranda of the house is located on the same side. And for greater privacy, the courtyard is also fenced off with a garage - the architects attach its block perpendicular to the main volume. In the front half of the courtyard, there are only metal parallelepipeds - the basis for future sculptural compositions from lianas.
The client wanted a modern house, and the architects did not deny themselves the pleasure of making a thing thoroughly modernist. The blocks - residential and garage - retain their original parallelepiped shape, and it is laconicism and strict geometry that become the main theme of this project. But in reality, parallelepipeds are just a shell in which a complex spatial intrigue is played out.
Like the site itself, the architects conditionally divide the elongated volume of the house into two parts: private and public. And if the block of bedrooms occupies the entire wing of the house, rectangular in plan, then the double-height living room and dining room - only half. The remaining quarter is an open veranda, which is interpreted as an integral part of the house: the architects seem to press a part of the courtyard facade inward and completely glaze the place of the “fold”, making the border between these spaces very ephemeral. Thanks to this transformation, a kind of "hood" appears in the building, in which the architects cut a large round hole. This spectacular opening through which a tree grows, and the sun's rays manage to move throughout the entire veranda in a day, and was replicated so widely - during the seven years that the house was being built, there was, it seems, not a single magazine that did not publish an invented UNK project "coordinate system". The architects managed to achieve the feeling that it was the house that emerged and developed around the tree, although in fact everything was exactly the opposite: the “pin” or, given the dimensions, rather the “pin” that pinned the house to the site, appeared after the end of construction - as a necessary vertical composition and just an effective plot-forming element. The crown of a pine tree casts picturesque changeable shadows on the walls and floor of the veranda, and the clear line of the trunk is supported by narrow vertical windows, with the help of which the architects additionally visually split the extended volume. There is a narrow gap right behind the tree: through it, sitting on the veranda, you can see who drove up to the house from the side of the road (and at the same time go unnoticed yourself).
Only two materials are used in the decoration of the facades - glass and natural stone. The house itself is faced with light beige travertine, and the garage is covered with narrow slate tiles, which very clearly builds a hierarchy of these volumes in relation to each other. However, the architects believe that such a perfect sounding of materials could not have been achieved if it were not for the background of natural greenery. Vegetation is present here in a variety of forms - this is a large-scale lawn, and the drapery of one of the walls of the gazebo with grapes, and the introduction of an architectural dominant in the form of a pine, finally.
Glass and stone are also actively present in interiors, but on an equal footing with wood, which softens them and brings the necessary coziness and warmth to the premises. The furniture was designed or selected by the architects to match the exterior - all the premises of the house are decorated in an extremely laconic way. As Yuliy Borisov recalls, instead of traditional for the genre of a country house "ruches", the customer was interested in unusual creative ideas. Outwardly, this discreet interior is actually full of ingenious solutions. What is at least a glass bridge connecting bedrooms and bathrooms: in order to be able to walk on it without embarrassment, the partitions are equipped with motion sensors, and when they are triggered, the transparent walls turn dull.
Having built a very modern and aesthetic house in every sense, the architects were able to make it very cozy. Strict geometry and laconicism elevated to absolute do not scare away with their cold perfection, but on the contrary, create all the conditions for solitude and communication with nature.
