Houses KJS / SODAA

Text description provided by the architects. Kali is one of the largest settlements on the Adriatic islands located on the island of Ugljan near the city of Zadar, Croatia. The village is best known for fishing. The project brief was to design two vacation houses on one of the few vacant lots situated between two roads with a height difference of 21 m in the longitudinal section. The challenge was to design a unified space, which would fulfill a multitude of the contemporary user’s heterogeneous needs, and at the same time, to create the feeling of living „with the sea at the seaside“.

The houses are designed as a spatial whole consisting of smaller ambiances that house various functions necessary for a high-quality vacation. Given that the houses are to be used mostly during the warm summer months, the idea was to enable abundant usage of outer spaces, which are envisioned as an extension of the inner ones. Together, these spaces create a spatial and functional whole. Due to the site’s steep slope, all created ambiances are enriched by the site’s greatest value – the view of the sea and the city of Zadar.

Considering the different conditions of the two micro-locations, the houses are organized completely differently, but they are of the same architectural expression. That way, the design unity is maintained. The houses’ relatively large volumes (in relation to the site itself) are divided into three cubes of approximately the same size arranged so that their relations create outer spaces of different qualities suitable for comfortable use.

The whole disposition is connected with a stairway positioned so that it does not disrupt other functions while providing access to the sea from both houses. Special attention was given to the design of large horizontal outer living spaces around which life revolves during both, the day and the night.