Hunting Lodge

Five radially arranged gabled roof houses around the central courtyard form a Hunting lodge in Carpathian mountains near Bratislava, Slovakia. Compact, traditional, archetypal volume distributes a rich program in a composition that deliberately reduces the visual volume of the house and moves it into a lightweight category. On the contrary to the delicate volume of the house is its robust, rough and very masculine expression embedded in a monochromatic wooden cladding applied to all walls and roofs. This unifying burned skin does not show any decoration or ornamentation and the default appearance of the house is hostile and monolithic. Fortification-like appearance can be transformed by use of sliding walls, set of foldable window shutters and large pivoting gates into an open pavilion space in the landscape. A small house provides rich composition of spaces with various individual characters and program: Stainless steel clad autopsy like room for meat processing is used by brave hunters only. The rest of the squad usually enjoys cheerful and dirty event hall that can get packed by 60 hunters, provides fireplaces, kitchen and bar that faces open air living room - a place to share all the best stories of the day. In a contrast, there is a romantic apartment that provides clean and tight micro space of outstanding precision of construction details due to use of prefab CLT wooden panels. The Hunting lodge is setting new benchmark in “hunting” typology in Slovakia. It is considered by hunters as a jump forward from shabby trailers to affordable, conceptually rich and functional architecture.

The programme of a hunting lodge set by the client was quite ambitious and volume demanding. The aim was to get the programme into the smallest volume possible, by dividing one building into five small houses. Radial arrangement of the houses is following the search for the best views and the best proximity distance ratio. The central courtyard is a connection of all the houses and the most important place of the building.

Wood structure, Object 'A' timber frame structure, object 'B' CLT panels, object 'C' timber frame structure (two by four system)