Architects:OFIS Architects

Area:359m²

Year:2022

Photographs:Tomaž Gregorič

Lead Architects:Rok Oman, Špela Videčnik

Project Team:Andrej Gregorič, Janez Martinčič José Navarrete Jiménez, Chiara Girolami, Katharina Felix, Sara Carciotti, Mariangela Fabbri, Ariane Micard

City:Kanalski Lom

Country:Slovenia

Text description provided by the architects. A family that unites the extremes of the global world: a Russian/American couple, she with a career in Moscow, he in New York, and their - not two or three, but - eight children. In search of neutral terrain, in which they would make a safe nest for venturing out into the world, they arrived in remote and almost forgotten places above the valleys of the Soča, Idrijca, and Čepovans dol. The Banj plateau, a dry karst landscape of pastures on the border between the Mediterranean and the Alpine world, characterized by the typical stone folk architecture of sparse features and slate roofs, convinced them, and they bought an old homestead in Kanalski Lom, hoping to live there and build a new home.

The refined stone structure of the old buildings was the basis for OFIS architects and they began to convince the cosmopolitan couple to preserve and integrate the two stone houses, which were otherwise not protected as monuments, into the new whole. Not many words were needed, the clients, who chose this part of the Slovenian Posočje from all possible places (a location in Bohinj was also included in the final selection), knew how to appreciate the simple richness of the heritage of these places and enthusiastically approached the renovation.