The End of the Two Villas by the Kupa River

In the 18th century, two villas of similar appearance but of opposite functions, were built on a meander of the River Kupa in Karlovac. During the 20th century, the industrial area of the town had been developing, causing the housing of the nobility to turn into housing for the working class. In the following years, those workers' apartments were abandoned, leaving one villa unoccupied, and the other with several families still living in it today. The villas are destined to deteriorate in the fragile conditions of their natural environment (caused by the floods). How does one design their end?

The approach to the intervention stems from the view of new architecture as future architectural heritage. It requires that the function, form, temporal, and spatial aspect are capable to adapt and remain open to new information. Two opposite approaches to intervention are used; for the served villa the approach is adaptive reuse, while for the servant villa it was the non-use. Two villas serve as a lost formwork. In the served villa, there is always a plethora of space. Spatial contradictions make the occupance of the space impossible. The masonry walls inside the villa serve as one-sided formwork for new concrete walls. The new walls take over the structural load, while the old inside wall is taken down, leaving a void as a negative. On the opposite side, the metal formwork creates a smooth surface, while the cavity retains a rough trace of the removed wall. Staircases are placed in the void, making the inhabitation of the entire villa possible. The rooms remain empty and unsaturated, subject to change, with fragments of old partition walls encouraging inhabitation. The old roof becomes a tent. No one resides in the servant villa. It is almost uninhabitable due to an abundance of floods. The proposed intervention is the radical protection. The reinforced concrete shell surrounds the villa, while the interior remains unchanged. The isolated fragment is left to decay, allowing the nature to inhabit the space and collect rainwater. The materials will gradually fall apart at their own decomposure rate, while concrete will still retain its form. Steel staircases project from the walls, leading nowhere. At the top there is a glimpse of the unreachable interior. The concrete shell reenacts the previous purpose of the villa as shelter from the sun and barrier from the river.