location: Zagreb, Croatia
client: private

project: 2006 – 2010
execution: 2010 – 2011

Bevk Perović project team:
Matija Bevk
Vasa J. Perović
Davorin Počivašek
Ida Sedušak

local architect: Produkcija 004 d.o.o. / Davor Katušić, Jana Kocbek

photo: Miran Kambič

The existing house, part of a semi-detached house built in 1930, was in a very bad condition, effectively abandoned for years and necessary to demolish. However, new planning permission effectively ‘cemented’ its ‘silhouette’ as that of the remaining, neighbour’s house.

The intervention, with a programme of simple, one family house, with living areas on the ground level, bedrooms in the attic area and a library/workspace in the basement, therefore focuses on the idea of interior ‘growth’ of different volumes, not visible from the street and currently present in the entire neighbourhood. It aims for an extension and inclusion of the garden into the space of the project.

The living room space therefore becomes an extruded volume, starting with the kitchen space on the front elevation, and stretching 20 meters back, penetrating deep into the garden – providing, along the way, a large terrace area for summer use. Towards the street, the only ‘sign’ of domestic life is offered through a full-size kitchen window overlooking the front garden, as a starting point of the extruded living space of the house.

The material definition of the project follows the idea of inclusion of the entire site into the project – extruded aluminium panels cover all the external surfaces of the house, the extruded volume of the garden pavilion, as well as all surrounding fences. Its ability to ‘wrap-up’ the project gives the project its autonomy from the surroundings – an idea emerges of a house / home ‘spreading’ out, including its surrounding area, making it part of the habitable area of the interior and simultaneously extricating it from the space of the city.