Project: House Around the Tree
Architects: TIMM
Location: Tbilisi, Georgia
Area: 4.843 sf
Year: 2023
Photographs by: Beka Gulva
Nestled in the hilly, green landscape of Okrokana, near Tbilisi, Georgia, TIMM Architecture’s contemporary residence harmoniously interacts with its surroundings. Minimalist and clean in design, it blurs the lines between indoors and outdoors.
The house revolves around a central tree, creating a space without boundaries. The sloped terrain led to a three-level layout, optimizing its position and connection with nature. The lower level houses the entrance and garage, while a plateau-like deck above hosts living spaces, a kitchen, and a pool with panoramic views. Exposed concrete and steel finishes contrast with the neutral palette, adding sophistication.
The house’s mass appears to float above, thanks to vertical wooden brise-soleils, providing sun protection and ventilation while maintaining a strong connection with nature. It’s a project that celebrates its natural surroundings with sensitivity and emotion.
In Okrokana, a hilly, green attractive location near Tbilisi, Georgia, a studio of young architects, TIMM Architecture, has just realized a residence that, attuned to the natural context, develops amplifying a close interaction with the surrounding. A contemporary, clean design, based on minimalism and essentiality, nurtures a seamless dialogue between inside and outside. The conceptual approach, the premise of the project, has shaped and brought to life the building around the presence of a tree, in the effort to create a space without boundaries. Confirmations of this commitment are portrayed in the work through elementary structural simplicity, openness, and transparency, allied to the use of natural materials, closely linked to the aspirations of the client.
The topography presented a difficult, but interesting challenge, offering the opportunity to use level changes to articulate the space with a clear programmatic division, and the house on three levels, adapted to the sloped terrain, makes the most of its position, intensifying the relationship with nature, inspiring and enriching the daily life of the residents.
The lower part, destined for the entrance and a garage, is surmounted by a plateau-like deck hosting a living room, kitchen, and lounge, interspersed with gardens and a swimming pool, taking full advantage of the panoramic views. Exposed concrete defines the raw, neutral palette of the open-plan living zone, providing an efficient, convivial ambiance, enhanced and warmed by light and shades. Steel finishes and slender ‘cross-shape’ steel pillars interrupt with distinctive detailing and sculptural signs the overall tonal uniformity of the contemporary aesthetic language, conferring notes of refined contrast.
The arrangement of the volume in non-aligned blocks avoids impositions or a strong impact on the land. The angled linear layout, fragmented by courtyards, open, covered verandas, and permeable transitions, breaks the robust, formal rigidity, highlighting the harmonious relationship between architecture and landscape. A staircase unfolds around the organic presence of the indoor tree, ensuring two levels of the house are extensively illuminated throughout the day and romantically in contact with the stars at night due to a large skylight.
The house’s mass, wrapped by an uninterrupted sequence of vertical wooden brise-soleils, stands on the upper floor seemingly floating, like a monolithic structure above a strategic play of solids and voids, exploring new, expansive, privileged visual exposures and spatial experiences. The louvers, entirely openable, besides ensuring sun protection and good ventilation, lend to the ensemble an effect of lightness and continuity with nature through the evocative material. A project of great satisfaction for both architects and clients, due to the common deep affinities that allowed them to celebrate with sensibility and live with emotion the place.
–TIMM
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