SKINNY HOUSE. A house on an 8-metre-wide plot in a post-punk landscape.
When we put on SKINNY jeans, we expect them to be flexible and well-fitting. This ensures comfort and freedom of movement despite their small size.
The same is true of the house on Znicz Street in Warsaw, which had to fit into an elongated trapezoidal plot with a front width of 12 metres and a width of 8 metres at its end. Is it possible to design a functional and visually attractive house in such conditions? Can a family of five function normally in such a house? Is it possible? Many investors ask themselves these questions when looking for a place for their own home in a big city based on rational financial conditions.
SKINNY HOUSE stands in the raw post-punk landscape of the disorderly buildings of the Nowe Włochy district. This unique part of the city has become overgrown with rusty metal sheets and old greenhouses that once had value to someone. Here, the relationship between the imperfect, the makeshift and the new becomes very important. Against this backdrop, the form of the house looks like a contemporary clinker sculpture. From the front, you can see the characteristic form of an elongated roof ending with a high blind wall. This massive reinforced concrete slab is supported by a steel V-shaped split column.
The shape and function of the house were adapted to the unusual plot. In order to achieve optimal building conditions on a plot 12m-8m wide and 51m long, the architect decided to place the building on the sharp boundary. This allowed for additional windows to be installed in the elongated part of the house, which in turn enabled proper lighting of the living area on the ground floor of the building. Due to lack of space, the garage was omitted from the building and a roof was designed over the parking spaces. The house gained a better functional solution inside and the possibility of convenient parking for two cars.
On the other side of the house, there is a garden and a relaxation area.
The living area on the ground floor consists of a large glazed living room with a dining area and an open kitchen. There is space for a study and a boiler room. The ground floor is separated from the first floor by a protruding balcony emphasised by a brick barrier. Its form, finished on both sides with high fire separation walls, is a distinctive element in the composition of the entire building. Upstairs, there is a master bedroom with a bathroom and a dressing room, three children's rooms and a bathroom. All rooms have access to a terrace running around the building. The house was designed for a contemporary family of 2+3. The façade was finished with tiles cut from solid hand-formed bricks. The tiles were laid in a regular pattern in horizontal strips. The way the tiles are laid gives the façade a sense of order, and their structure gives it a distinctive rough character. The house was designed in accordance with sustainable development requirements. The improved thermal properties of the windows were achieved by using aluminium profiles with triple glazing. In addition, PIR insulation boards with a thermal conductivity coefficient of Lambda 0.022 W/(mK) were used, and the windows were mounted on brackets flush with the façade. The house was designed with heat recovery, a heat pump and photovoltaics on the roof. Safety glass was used on the ground floor and first floor. Retention tanks were provided for collecting rainwater and reusing it for watering the garden.
The rough form of the house, covered with rust-coloured clinker, draws inspiration from the surrounding buildings, blending in with the post-punk landscape. SKINNY HOUSE has become a symbol of the changes taking place in one of the last such places in Nowe Włochy in Warsaw.
This sculpted and heavily glazed building was designed in a simple and functional way to fit the narrow and difficult to develop plot. The SKINNY HOUSE, like the previously designed SLIM HAUS on Koszalińska Street, is an interesting answer to the question of how to properly design a building on a plot less than 16 metres wide.
