The customer of the Home for the Homeless shelter is the Domy Wspólnoty Chleb Życia (House of the Bread of Life Community) charity, founded in 2002 by the Catholic nun Malgorzata Chmielewska. It fights against the marginalization of the most vulnerable segments of the population - low-income children, youth, people with disabilities. The Foundation operates in the więtokrzyskie Voivodeship, one of the poorest in Poland. It was there that the orphanage was built, designed for people who simultaneously dropped out of the public structure and have health problems - not so large as to count on a place in a state boarding house, but they do not allow using the shelter system.
The site for construction is the outskirts of the village of Jankowice in the Ozarów commune (commune), far from the nearest town. The building is inscribed in a rectangle lined with old trees - the former school football field. The architects, the Warsaw bureau xystudio, emphasize that not a single tree was damaged during the implementation of the project.
The windows offer idyllic views, but the courtyard is just as important, giving residents a sense of security. At the same time, its glazed walls allow the staff of the shelter to follow what is happening there: as sister Khmelevskaya explains, her wards can do anything. In addition, they all need round-the-clock, if not care, then supervision.
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zooming 1/3 Home for the Homeless Shelter Photo © One Light Studio
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zooming 2/3 Home for the Homeless Shelter Photo © One Light Studio
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zooming 3/3 Shelter "Home for the Homeless" Photo © One Light Studio
The courtyard, benches for smoking (this habit is considered a lesser problem here compared to the rest of the difficulties of the residents of the shelter: it at least helps their re-socialization) and other public areas are made as attractive as possible to facilitate communication, and the bedrooms, although cozy, are small so that they don't often stay there during the day. At the request of his sister Khmelevskaya, the artist Marcin Chaya painted the walls of the courtyard with a cheerful fresco "The Seasons" in order to avoid excessive asceticism. The kitchen is designed for the feasible participation of the residents of the shelter in the preparation of food.
The one-storey building (1485 m2) with an undulating roof is divided by walls with curly brickwork into three functional zones. Closer to the entrance - a chapel, administrative premises, rehabilitation rooms, a common room and a dining room. Then there are 19 double rooms with a bathroom each, designed for different physical capabilities (although in general the shelter has a barrier-free environment). At the end there are three small apartments for the staff of the orphanage, who, since this is a charitable Catholic organization, see this work as their religious duty. But this work is in any case very difficult, so the architects made their part of the building isolated so that they could rest there, detached from the outside world.
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zooming 1/5 Shelter "Home for the homeless" Photo © xystudio
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zooming 2/5 Shelter "Home for the Homeless" Photo © xystudio
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zooming 3/5 Shelter "Home for the homeless" Photo © xystudio
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zooming 4/5 Shelter "Home for the homeless" Photo © xystudio
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zooming 5/5 Shelter "Home for the homeless" Photo © xystudio
The project was supposed to be inexpensive to implement and operate, self-sufficient and environmentally friendly. During the construction, bricks from a destroyed 200-year-old mill were used, boards from demolished old barns, which are many in the vicinity: in addition to the "green" effect, this also gave the project a tactile feel so that the inhabitants of the shelter could get used to it more easily.
The architects admit that not all eco-components were suitable for the Home for the Homeless: for example, the heat pump did not fit due to power surges and geological conditions. Gas heating turned out to be much easier to operate and much cheaper for the shelter. Solar collectors would also be superfluous: there is no demand for the collected energy in Jankovice.
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zooming 1/4 Shelter "Home for the homeless" Photo © xystudio
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zooming 2/4 Shelter "Home for the homeless" Photo © xystudio
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zooming 3/4 Shelter "Home for the homeless" Photo © xystudio
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zooming 4/4 Shelter "Home for the homeless" Photo © xystudio
Underfloor heating, heat recovery ventilation, well-insulated walls and windows, an ecological wastewater treatment system, rainwater collection tanks: it goes for irrigation.
