A black house near Warsaw. The façade is decorated with tan boards

Its design was made by Marek Szcześniak of the MAZM studio. The black house was built for a young family and is located near Warsaw. Its owners saw one of the architect’s realisations five years ago while reading the whiteMAD.pl website. They were impressed by the project published then and decided to entrust Marek Szczesniak with the design of their dream house.

The idea behind the design of the house was to cut down as few trees as possible. The building is located on a wooded plot. The result is a single-storey house with plenty of natural light through skylights in the roof. An important element was to maintain the residents’ sense of privacy, which is why the building was set back from the street. An elegant and timeless character was achieved with a black façade made of burlap boards according to the Japanese Shou Sugi Ban technique.

The entire concept was created in the form of hand sketches. The functional layout proposed by the architect has been shaped by separating two blocks. Along the plot are the functions accessible to all the householders (garage, kitchen, dining room and living room with mezzanine), and across from the private zone, bathrooms and bedrooms have been built.

In this way, the house has taken on an ‘L’ shape, creating a kind of semi-enclosed patio from the garden with a terrace and forest lawn. This single, least wooded part of the garden invites you in as soon as you step over the threshold of the house thanks to a glass wall located opposite the front door. The multi-glazed roof further emphasises the zones and functions, but also has the great advantage of allowing additional light into the rooms, so that the house, surrounded by the forest, is very bright. What’s more, this solution made it possible to create a separate studio on the street side and a mezzanine on the garden side overlooking the treetops – a place for additional tranquillity and immersion in nature. For the sake of purity of form, traditional gutters were dispensed with and replaced by concealed water drains,” describes architect Marek Szcześniak.

Zobacz

The final shape of the building was influenced by the functional layout. The interior was designed as a visually attractive place to relax. The bricks, which are arranged in a characteristic manner and painted white, are noteworthy. The oak frames in the windows frame the view of the greenery like a picture frame.

A large double-sided fireplace has also been built into the space, separating the dining area from the lounge area. Its colour, like that of the kitchen, corresponds to the colour of the façade. The shape of the bathroom tiles also refers to it. The calm atmosphere inside was created by using the same natural materials and colours – concrete, oak and black granite – in all the rooms.

As the owners say, the architect was right when he said that this black house would decorate itself, and that is exactly what happened.

designer: Marek Szcześniak, MAZM

photos: Ignacy Matuszewski

Also read: single-family house | elevation | minimalism | interiors | whiteMAD on Instagram