WIND HOUSE: DESIGNED BY TREES

Rambling its way among the tall pines of Kampinos Forest near Warsaw, Wind House was designed to fit in with its forest setting. As a result, it’s as if the home has become one with the surrounding trees, at times almost disappearing into the green of the foliage and the brown of the wood. Architect Przemek Olczyk, from Polish studio Mobius Architekci, let nature and the dense pine forest guide his hand in the design.

“During the design phase, we didn’t think too much about the shape of the building,” explains Olczyk. “The wooded areas were marked out and we wanted to leave them intact. Then, I started drawing the lines of the house to fit in between them.”

In other words, a sense of conservation and a desire to preserve the environment dictated the shape of the building.

The local area, the village of Izabelin in the Kampinos National Park, is one of Warsaw’s most desirable residential areas, perhaps because of its unusual, almost cinematic appearance.

 

Trees that shape façades

Like its footprint, the façades of Wind House were also shaped by nature to establish an ongoing dialogue between inside and out. This was achieved with large exterior windows on all sides, none of which are parallel to each other, and a roughly central skylight, which also provides access to the usable part of the roof, partly covered by a green mantle.

The other external walls – which are closed or partially closed with smaller windows – maintain a deep connection with the pine forest by virtue of their construction in Siberian larch in an openwork arrangement, in some places hiding more windows.

Natural stone has also been used outside at ground level, continuing on into the house to further accentuate that sense of continuity between the outside and inside.

 

Interiors shaped by nature

The name of the home is an invitation to immerse yourself in the environment of the pine forest. This environment is also invited inside, where it can be hard to orient yourself due to the complex layout. Nature also dictated the colors of the finishes, floors, and furnishings, with wood dominating alongside stone and their respective grains. This is also true of the stairs, whose top flight is open to the sky via the skylight above.

As a result, this nearly 4800 square foot (450 m²) building is stylistically consistent both inside and out, giving its owners a sense of constant communion with the essence of Kampinos Forest.

In Izabelin, Mobius Architekci has also investigated the relationship between architecture, design, and nature with Circle House, a round residence that was born from the forest and has the forest in its heart.