Dekleva Gregorič Architects designed a house in Logatec, Slovenia, primarily based on the rules of local architecture and adapted to the users’ specific needs – a couple living in the countryside. It respects the morphology of the traditional built context, referring to the prevailing gabled roof type and respecting its volumetric and material parameters.
Chimney House
In dialogue with its surrounding vernacular architecture, the house designed by Dekleva Gregorič Architects for a couple living in the Slovenian countryside, is fully opened to the sky.
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- 26 September 2017
- Logatec
The kitchen, with a multifunctional wood stove, plays the vital role in the private and social life of the house. The stove’s centrally positioned chimney determines the concept of the design, informing the centrally aligned layout of spaces within the specific cross-section of the house. The ridge of the roof is pushed apart creating a continuous skylight running throughout the house’s linear volume and providing top light for all the crucial spaces. Positioned on the borderline of the village it clearly relates to the adjacent wooden barn with the dark wooden materiality, but with the new distinctive volumetric identity it moves away from its vernacular neighbour and associates with the nearby 16th century church, creating a dialogue between the two.
Oiled larch boards completely define the materiality of the outside relating to the traditional finish of the vernacular barn. A secondary wooden roof cladding provides the continuity of the dark wooden materiality of the facade cladding. The building’s envelope is developed as a thick wall integrating multiple storage spaces, the secondary kitchen, and small ‘inhabitable’ window niches that carefully curate incoming light and expanding views to the surroundings. The material definition of the interior responds to haptic habits of inhabitants: oiled oak is used for all the surfaces that can be reached and touched by the human body, whereas the structure of the roof is in reinforced concrete showing the imprint of the wooden formwork that provides for the continuity of the texture of interior envelope.
Chimney house, Logatec, Slovenia
Program: single family house
Architects: Dekleva Gregorič Architects
Team: Aljoša Deklev, Tina Gregorič, Vid Zabel, Primož Boršič
Area: 830 sqm
Built area: 145 sqm
Surface: 205 sqm (106 sqm ground floor, 99 sqm basement)
Completion: 2016