“I was brought here by a hurricane in this house,” said little Ellie as she flew from Kansas with her modest home to the distant Magic Land. A wooden house in Slovakia, built for a couple with a small child, looks as if it has just landed on an endless green field, stuck its legs deeper into the ground and firmly established itself in a new place.
On the border of Slovakia and the Czech Republic, in the foothills of the White Carpathians - not far from the village of Melčice-Leskov - an unusual house has recently appeared. What makes it unique is the combination of modern architecture, natural materials: wood and more, as well as the concept of energy efficiency, which was the main requirement of the customers.
Indeed, in difficult times, when resources are constantly becoming more expensive, autonomous homes are becoming more and more in demand. And constant breakdowns of heating systems, heat loss even before it "comes" into the house, the need to lay endless kilometers of pipes also do not contribute to the growth of the popularity of centralized systems.
Of course, the construction of such houses costs a little more than usual, but savings on electricity and heating will cover these investments in a few years and begin to work in favor of the residents. That's why he is a "house without bills", so that the homeowners first invested well in its construction, and then paid practically nothing. By the way, the energy consumption of this particular house is only 15 kWh / m2 per year, which is 10 times less than in buildings built at the end of the 20th century. This is a typical "passive house", which lacks nothing at all until the ideal state of equilibrium, when generation and consumption are equal to each other.
Let's tell a little about the place where the project was implemented. The customers, professing the idea of a modest and healthy life, decided to acquire a piece of land in an ecologically favorable place in the Trenčín region of Slovakia and build a completely autonomous house on it. It is worth making a reservation: it was not possible to complete this by 100%, and if the tenants do not have enough of their electricity, they will be able to take it from the general network.
On the territory of 5000 m2 spouses and their children will have a place to roam: a field around the house, a dense forest adjoins it, a river flows nearby, a mineral spring is located nearby, and the nearest buildings are 100 meters away and further. Taking a break from civilization, the residents of this house are not deprived of the opportunity to quickly return to it: it takes 20 minutes to drive to a large city, and an hour to the capital of the country, Bratislava.
When two young architects Martin Šichman and Boris Meluš from the Oximoron studio set about creating the project, they faced a seemingly impossible task: to save as much as possible by making an energy-efficient house with high-quality, environmentally friendly materials. As a result, wood, straw (insulation), clay and, of course, RHEINZINK titanium-zinc were used during the construction. As the architects said, the house
90% organic renewable materials.
Facade with an area of 120 m2 clad in titanium-zinc RHEINZINK according to the technology of vertical corner seam, and on the roof with an area of 180 m2 the same sheets are connected by double vertical folds, which (how convenient!) can be used already at a slope of 5 °. But the most interesting solution is the roof slope facing south: 15 VELUX roof windows are installed on it, which illuminate the house, and also bring more heat into it at any time of the year than they give it back. In the Northern Hemisphere, such a solution seems to be the most logical for those who do not want to overpay for heating. The streams of sunlight that enter the space of the house through the skylights not only save on electric lighting, but, as scientists have found, significantly improve the mood of the residents.
It is worth saying that the construction of the house, which lasted from 2011 to 2013, aroused keen interest throughout Slovakia, because this architecture is still unusual. This project was awarded at the "Wooden House of the Year" competition (2012) and was nominated for a number of other national awards. According to the customers, they initially wanted to build something interesting, and not an ordinary box, glazed on the south side.
This house can remind a box only to someone who has never seen anything but a box. Instead of the usual four walls, where it is so boring to sit on warm summer days, and the traditional gable roof, it has a much more interesting geometry of walls and an unusual roof: one part of it is flat and almost horizontal, while the other, on the contrary, tends to the vertical.
The house was built by the Kontrakting company: its specialists installed wooden panels (they can be seen from the outside - in areas not lined with RHEINZINK titanium-zinc), made thermal insulation, adjusted and checked all systems. The interior of the house is made just of these natural wood panels, which look organically in all rooms. And there are a lot of them: on two floors on an area of 182 m2 fit a living room, kitchen, bathroom, three bedrooms and several technical rooms.
The owners believe that they will like life in the bosom of nature: they bought the plot around the house, they will raise chickens and goats, grow fruits and vegetables, conduct a subsistence economy and raise children healthy and happy. And only a futuristic house will remind you that it is the 21st century after all.
Representative office of the RHEINZINK company on Archi.ru
Representative office of VELUX (Velux) on Archi.ru
