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Architects: Le Atelier
- Area: 99 m²
- Year: 2013
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Photographs:Lucia Tolstova
Text description provided by the architects. The house is located in Moscow neighborhood in a residential community with very high land value so we had only 45m2 site plot which was fenced by fences of neighbors. Old wooden house built in 30s located on the plot belongs to customer's parents also the plot contains several old lime trees.
The construction budget was small (we had only 65000 euro to build the house, make finishing and buy furniture), so we were forced to find the cheapest and easy to construct solutions. The rectangular volume with a sloped from the side of existing house roof we lagged with deal boards and painted white.
Also we accented the main entrance by painting it yellow to harmonize the house with the old house. Thus this house stands out from all others houses nearby because it has clean shape and simplicity. Having said that, it should be mentioned that, despite the distinction of the house, it naturally compliments the environment.
We oriented the windows so as to show best views. Also it was important for us to place windows on both ends of each significant direction of the movement of the people in the house to illuminate them by natural light. The customer’s family consists of 5 people: 2 adults and 3 preschool age kids. The biggest part of the house space is a double height children’s room at the second floor with a space for games at the first level, a place for homework execution at the second level and small bedrooms for kids with plurality of storage places for toys and clothing.
The master bedroom has 5 meters of ceiling height and quite spacious cloakroom for such a small house. The wall which separates kitchen from family room is covered by ornament which been drawn by kids by hand. We've designed this ornament especially for this house. The ornament has a feature that it can be drawn by hand and mistakes and disproportions which occur during drawing process improve graphics of an ornament. In order to be sure about ergonomics and safety of the staircase we built the staircase prototype in 1:1 scale.
The original staircase was built only after kids told us that the staircase prototype is suitable for them. To make the staircase secure we eliminated all sharp angles of it and painted all cutouts yellow. Almost all furniture in the house is built-in or custom made – this allowed to reduce the cost and use the space at a maximum efficiency.
