ou cottage

Intimacy in Two Ways

 

The OU cottages were commissioned by a client who had purchased a plot in a small settlement within the Železné hory Protected Landscape Area. His wish was for me to design two cottages on the site, without being constrained by a budget.

The site itself is a fascinating place. It is a sloping meadow, with a pond at its lower end and a forest extending from its upper edge. I did not want to design two completely identical buildings, as the settlement itself consists of a rather interesting mix of structures from different periods. Instead, I wanted to find a solution in which the two cottages would share a common language while remaining visually and spatially distinct. When searching for a sense of intimacy within the interiors, the forest and the pond became my main sources of inspiration.

The lighter O Cottage is partially embedded into the ground and opens towards three sides. Here, I wanted to shift the perception of the space towards a more horizontal perspective, similar to the experience of entering a pond. The darker U Cottage sits directly on the terrain and opens only towards the forest. Here, on the other hand, I tried to create a more vertical space, evoking the experience of being immersed in the forest.

The unlimited budget and the client’s pressure for rapid construction ultimately proved fatal to the project. The originally intended timber cottages were replaced by a cheap solution in the form of a masonry structure made of aerated concrete, and the whole process culminated in my not being invited to participate in the subsequent stages of the project.