Origami House

Memory of project

The project was specially done for TV programme “Dachniy Otvet”. In the frame of the programme the customer and the author of the project meet only once, and then time comes for projecting and construction which is the matter of the architect exclusively.  After the project is fully done it is filmed and customers are invited to view and evaluate it.

The first meeting with the customers defined and specified the project vector and its functionality. The customers are the family with strong sport background. Consequently they would rather get the place for summer recreation including sports than the object for doing gardening. As for the parents there was the only remark from them:

anything but basketball arrangement please! “So this short remark gave a complete freedom for fantasy and creativity.

If to divide the territory into functional zones there must be five of them:

1. Swimming and bathing zone: have a pool, a shower, a bucket for dousing after sauna. A small overpass adjoins this zone with a well to get water from. Significant detail of this area is a solar battery which massively contributes to an environmentally sustainable usage of the watering system especially when it comes to unpredictable Moscow weather.

2. Lying in the sun zone: have a few beach beds, podiums, armchairs; there must be a shelter to hide from the sun, to relax, to read a book etc.

3. The Gym: have simple but enhanced sport facilities: horizontal bars, parallel bars, “health disks”, and swing, badminton and volleyball playgrounds. There also must be a referee’s chair too. Finally a chest for changing clothes and towels and other things is a must.

4. Kitchen and dining room: should have a small kitchen, grill-barbeque, firewood stock, dinner table, summer cinema, and stereo-system and hammock chair.

5. Observation point: is in fact the second level which is intensively used for sunbathing. So there are a few check beds and watering system.

Artistic vision of the project: initially the idea of so called architectural “origami” seemed well turned. Surely in the course of construction the project was being transformed but the idea of a folding book, the saw cuts of which created new capacities, shapes and spatial ties-in appeared quite a winning one. More than that such approach made it possible to create ties-in between closed and open spaces, between horizontal and vertical plains; as a result it makes the space interwork in a new way.

The project lives as double functional one: on the one hand it returns to nature and on the other- the project protects from the wind, rain and sun heat. These two interworking forms have subtle boundaries and complement each other, working as all-in-one-piece project. The white color was chosen to support the white buildings of the house and sauna.

Text.- Peter Kostelov.