VÁCEGRES, COUNTRY HOME/MANOR HOUSE, COMPETITION WINNER 2004
In the 21th century, a country home should be more than simply a well-built house: its design should communicate a timeless idea. It has to define practical and comfortable spaces for a well-grounded, real lifestyle; every detail should be prepared with artisan quality – just as in times past.
“…and then the concept of the ideal home suddenly just hit me” said L. “Tell me about it” I asked intrigued. “It happened”– he began – “when my wife and I were spending a few days in county Zala, and at dusk passing through a grove we reached a lakeshore. We were watching the landscape for quite a while until it disappeared in the darkness. That was the moment I realized how we should live. There should be a beautiful grove with scattered little houses. Each house should accommodate a different purpose, there should be a house for bathing, a house for sleeping, for cooking, for eating, a house for library. And every time when walking from one house to another we would walk in that beautiful grove.”
The architectural expression of the idea of the “grove” with the houses shows a homogeneous structure created by interweaving the two elements. All functions are accommodated in a separate building; and as the buildings are in contact at several points according to the logical connections of the activities, free passing is always possible both inside and outside the house. The fine relations and smooth transitions of outdoor and indoor spaces - like the kitchen and the herb-garden, the living room and the orangery - are also based on these natural connections.
Péter Kis, Gábor Balázsa
Visualization by: Gábor Balázsa
In 2004, our studio won a design competition announced by a private client to find complex architectural solutions for the modern equivalent of the traditional Hungarian gentry lifestyle.
As in so many cases, it turned out during the process of creating the final plans that the real priorities of the client are not in line with the basic idea of the winning competition design he originally favoured. Therefore, the design of the realized building was based on a new, alternative concept.
