Project: Autofamily House
Architects: KWK Promes
Location: Poland
Area: 10,656 sf
Photographs by: Juliusz Sokolowski
Autofamily House by KWK Promes
The Autofamily House is a contemporary home with a design that represents a whole new way of thinking about the entrance area of the home. In our modern lives, we rarely leave the home without the car, so what KWK Promes did was to integrate the vehicle exit and entry with the home’s entrance.
Autofamily house represents a new way of thinking about the entrance area in a suburban residence. We usually enter the house by a car, using the garage integrated in main solid. The main entrance is rarely used. Nowadays the cars are becoming cleaner and more eco-friendly, hence the idea emerged to include the garage into the representative entrance area. As a result, a new type of a family house emerged. In the Autofamily House the entrance area and the driveway get transformed into an unique multifunctional space and the moment of driving in the house become a pleasant experience.
The terrain is leveled in order to obtain two zones: the driveway space and the private garden. The driveway is left on the ground level and the house with intimate garden is lifted 3 meters above and separated by a retaining wall. As to comfort access to the building, in meaning of parking the car on the level of living room, a route connecting the two levels were designed. However, to avoid dividing the garden, the driveway is covered with a green roof and finished with walls serving as borderlines. The result is a tunnel emerging in the garden, becoming a house. The owner is an art collector so the tunnel is also used as a gallery of his paintings collection.
The only access to the plot is from the south, effecting in a conflict between the driveway and the garden to be designed. Therefore, the garden and the house is elevated to the level +1 while the entrance stays at the level 0.
For the inhabitants comfort the driveway leads them to the garden, creating easy connection between two floors. To preserve the garden intimacy, that could be disturbed with an entrance, the driveway was covered with green roof and walls. As a result the created tunnel rises up into the garden and becomes the house.
The house owner is an art collector what inspired the idea of joining together: the entrance, the driveway and his gallery of paintings located in the tunnel. Therefore, the living space expanded after adding the driveway and the car is now an integral part of the interior.
Nowadays the houses are located in the suburbs and the outskirts of the city. Thus, the car plays a significant role as a main transport. As a result, we enter the house driving in through the garage and the main entrance is hardly used. In Autofamily House the garage, a typical part of the ‘unclean’ zone, is now the representative entrance driveway section.
Therefore, a new typology of a family house is defined by joined entrance and driveway that now is a part of the clean zone. The moment of driving in the garage becomes a pleasant experience. Thanks to this solution and today’s technology, the car is getting more and more important as it improves the quality and comfort of life, while being an excellent element of interior design.
