The terraced houses of Marko Šlajmer and his colleagues were built in 1957. One of the first cooperative constructions shows the active initiative of young architects at the time. The houses reflect rational construction, high living culture, and above all impress with an innovative spatial concept. Today's perception of an apartment is disturbed by small rooms and relatively low lighting of the rooms.
Spatial puzzle
The main issue of the renovation was how to open up the spaces, visually enlarge them, while keeping the staircases spatially defined and being limited by the load-bearing walls or the principle of construction.
In the two terraced houses, we redefined the vertical demarcation between the two units, into a larger family apartment and a smaller one for one person.
Passages of light
Within a limited field of well-defined existing spaces, we look for interventions that change the perception and function of living. The central staircase connects all the rooms in the house. We add light vertically from the roof and horizontally from the perimeter facades.
Raumplan
When part of the living room is lowered to the slope of the terrain, a surprising volume of the dining room is created next to existing rooms. In the dimension of the extension, which was already designed by Šlajmer, the facade articulation is retained, the former basement window becomes the lower part of the composition of the large window to the south.
Common - a settlement of terraced houses
Terraced houses are protected as architectural heritage. When renovating, we take into account the uniformity of the facades of all the houses in the settlement, facing the street and the garden. A large two-story window on the final facade of the set is the only intervention that expresses the renovation externally.
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