Red House

Recently nominated for the EU Mies award 2019 'red house' by Biuro Toprojekt is situated in a Cistercian landscape of Rudy Wielkie, a vast area in Upper Silesia of Poland. The walls of the building were made out of hand-sorted waste bricks from nearby brickworks making it a perfect fit for the vicinity of Rudy where one can find a number of brick buildings built in a masterly way.

The foundation was created as a result of the already active forestry and fishing economic activity of the Order, which has been running since the 13th century. Compliant with the Cistercian rule, based on the principles of ecology and respect for nature, construction was based on easily accessible local materials - wood and bricks. The building is located on the edge of a vast forest glade, in the corner of the area designated for the new single-family development.

A variation of cross-linking was used, in which two bricks next to each other with heads on top of each other are pushed out on one side and pressed on the other side in relation to the face of the wall. This simple treatment significantly enriched the work of chiaroscuro on the façade. By completely removing the same pair of bricks, an openwork wall was created, concealing the window openings that could break the clean structure of the façade.

At night, when the chiaroscuro does not work, the first plan is made up of glowing drops of openwork. The building grows out of the ground and is not to be separated from it by any band. In the process of patinating the ceramic material, the line of contact with the ground should become more and more blurred, and the colors of the roof and wall surface should be joined together. The green roof, over time, will have a plant cover and colors will start to harmonize making the house and the natural surrounding as one

toprojekt: arch. Marek Wawrzyniak, mgr inż. arch. Karol Wawrzyniak and mgr inż. Izabela Groborz-Musik