A natural landscape is the world's grand style. The villa has been situated in a fabulous location near Niepołomice Forest and the legendary Benedictine monastery in Staniątki. On the one side there is an awe-inspiring forest, and an open flat landscape with a wide exposure of Wieliczka Foothills on the horizon extends to the south. A house located in such an environment must be rooted in the earth as well as fixed in nature in an acquiescent manner.
The villa has been designed according to the principles, which once invented by Francis Lloyd Wright, constitute a firm foundation of modern housing. The house continues a great plane of the flat landscape outside. Its image is dominated by horizontal lines inscribed in the landscape, and its function – by the theme of wandering space.
The interior space is organized on an open plan with accented zones. Living areas are not strictly delimited, but they open to each other and to the flat landscape. Consolidation of the functions inside follows the immensity of the landscape outside. The walls do not share the space, but it is directed by screens and furniture. The heart of the house is a two-story living room with a fireplace. A homogeneous living space with an elegant representative image is complemented by a comfortable dining area and a spacious kitchen with a breakfast annex. Near the entrance there is a back area with a separate room with its own kitchen unit and a small bathroom, a laundry room, a drying room, a pantry and other auxiliary facilities. There is also a separate section for the guests. Deeper inside there is a private zone of the owners, with the bedrooms and the library. The global civilisational transformations are enabling an increasing number of people go to work without leaving their homes. A need for spatial symbiosis between a place of residence and work resulted in the villa comprising a part of the creative work, with an office and a conference room. In view of the challenges that modern architecture is confronted with by the contemporary civilization and economy as well as the development of the Third Wave Society, the phenomenon of combining functions of living and working is a key issue of an architectural concept of the twenty-first-century housing.
The interior of the villa has a walking character. The house does not end up at the contour of the walls, but extends into the space and landscape. The levels which lower successively following the inclines make it intertwine with the area. A simple asymmetrical composition with a dynamic character, intertwining solids and the continuity of the space, remind of a modernist lineage of the building.
The shape of the house betrays its modernist origin. The simple, asymmetrical composition is dynamic, and the mutually interwoven solids coupled with the continuity of space smack of some international-style influence. In the philosophy of space of Barycz & Saramowicz Design Office, the key point is to find such a shape of a building where living space is transformed into a landscape.
Dr. Rafal Barycz, architect
Dr. Pawel Saramowicz, architect