The modern residential house is located in a picturesque part of the city of Kaunas, in the old district of Žaliakalnis. This area has always been the most prestigious and desirable area for private houses, it was a good example of expensive, prestigious, private construction. During interwar this area was built with very solid private houses, where the intelligence, representatives of the elite lived. This location is attractive due to the fact that the plots are located near an oak grove, on a slope that offers a panoramic view of the city.
During the Soviet era, this territory was partially damaged, the occupiers tried to unify everything, smaller-scale apartment buildings were built, industrial buildings and garages appeared in the interstices. Realizing that this is a sacred place for Kaunas residents and Lithuanians in general, they tried to damage the oak grove, erase and destroy those private villas in Žaliakalnis.
Returning to the project of this house, after the restoration of independence the society and the society of architects tried to correct those mistakes, returning this territory its lost prestige, because that lack of continuity of history, low-quality construction did not fit with the origin of the place.
The property, like all Žaliakalnis plots, is characterized by the fact that the plot is narrow, starts on the street and ends somewhere in the middle of the slope. In this case, the plot does not look at the city, but at an impressive hill, slope, ditch and forest.
The customer's family itself is specific, because everyone is an adult: a student son and a couple, so the project program itself was slightly reduced. The clients wanted a modern large three-car garage, only three bedrooms in total, a large imposing common area and what really inspired and interested us the most, a music room.
The clients wanted a very well-equipped music studio with the best equipment and acoustic surfaces.
As the plot is narrow and sloping, when driving along the length of the house down the plot, the ground is lowered through one floor, within 3 m. down. This created a certain problem during the design process, because when designing the garage to Perkūno alley, the rooms are at the bottom, so the architectural team made a decision to enter the garage by driving down from the side of the slope.
Such a decision made it possible not to have a garage door on the main facade, on that prestigious Perkūno alley, but instead to design the main entrance to the house and the possibility to design the entire house on one floor.
A child's bedroom and the main entrance, as well as a large living room and kitchen area, were installed on Perkūno alley, and two master bedrooms were located on the side of the slope above the garage.
Since the son is no longer a small child, from a philosophical point of view, the owners and the son were as if separated through a common space.
As the house is on a slope, perhaps the most interesting solution was to raise the music room above the building. The music room has no stairs, it stands on the elevator shaft like on a leg, to which there is only one access - only by elevator from the garage or from the living room. This made it possible to create a real room for acoustics and music, which is not affected by the sounds coming from the rooms below and vice versa. The music room is like a separate capsule covered in golden scales in the sky.
Keeping in mind the very composition of the house, it was inspired by the aspiration to face the house not on the slope, but on the prestigious Perkūno alley. As the main entrance is from the side of the street, we decided to squeeze the terrace and the common space in the middle, to cut a gap so that the terrace does not look at the neighbors, not at the sides of the plot, but diagonally towards the main street. We wanted the viewer walking down the street to see the main entrance of the building and see a hint of common space.
The composition of the house is assembled from black and golden volumes. The yellow color was chosen consciously, as if trying to prompt that this is a prestigious place in the city to build private houses. At the same time, it hints that we even make fun of ourselves with this decision, emphasizing that it is expensive.
The different textures of the black plaster and the yellow shiny panels create a huge contrast and leave the viewer to decide and think why it was done that way. This was intended to make the building memorable, to leave the question of what those volumes are, what makes them special and why the materials are so different. So that this puzzle, architecture as an aesthetic psychological task, seems to remain all the time.
Team:
Architect: Architectural Bureau G.Natkevicius& Partners
Lead Architects: Eglė Savodnikaitė, Adomas Rimšelis, Gintautas Natkevičius
Photography: Lukas Mykolaitis
