The house stands in one of the settlements of individual houses in Vilnius city. The street and neighboring buildings are under development. Several plots already have houses, but most are still awaiting for individual construction with an unpredictable architectural result. Such a forecast for the future resulted in a restrained and laconic character of the house that could easily cope with the various solutions of the neighboring buildings.
Project Name: 025 Concrete home
Office Name: ŠA Atelier
Office Website: https://www.sarkauskai.com/
Firm Location: Vilnius, Lithuania
Completion Year: 2021
Gross Built Area (m2/ ft2): 214
Project Location: Vilnius, Lithuania
Program / Use / Building Function: Residential architecture/ House
Lead Architects: Gabrielė Šarkauskienė, Antanas Šarkauskas
Lead Architects e-mail: info@sarkauskai.com
Photo Credits: Norbert Tukaj
The plot of the house has a characteristic terrain descent, however it was important for the owner that the house should not have any stairs or other height cuts. As a result, the volume of the house is compact and fits in the flat part of the plot, thus minimizing changes to the existing terrain.
The house occupies an area of 18 by 18 meters. The square-shaped roof and perimeter walls envelop not only the warm rooms, but also the outdoor terrace, cars and entrance area. Outdoor spaces become an integral part of house architecture.
The walls of the house are made of three-layer prefabricated reinforced concrete elements made in the factory and brought to be assembled on site. We designed the house according to the transport capacity of the size of the walls. We have designed the concrete elements to emphasize the principle of assembling the house, so the corner walls are connected with lap joints. The prefabricated reinforced concrete solution significantly shortens the construction time and does not require additional facade finishing. However this type of construction requires a lot of interior and engineering communications decisions during the early design stage. This principle of work seems right to us, because we see the exterior and interior of the building as a single piece.
Inside the house, as well as on the outside, there are certain structural rules that are reflected in the interior appearance. Therefore structural concrete walls are open concrete or putty, but with visible joints. Meanwhile, all other frame based non-load-bearing partitions are covered with plywood panels. In this way, being inside makes it possible to understand what space is made of and at the same time enjoy its materials.
