Travelers’ House: Tent-Like Roof Orients Life Around a Central Atrium
Travelers’ House stands in Warsaw, Poland, a ground-level house by BBGK Architekci shaped for a couple who live to roam and return. The plan revolves around an atrium and a tent-like roof that pulls garden air deep inside, then frames long views into the pines. Materials skew warm and tactile, and the interior nods to tropical modernism without turning away from the woods outside.
Pines filter the light, and the roof hovers broad and low. A long threshold slides open, trading a wall for breeze, resin, and birdsong carried in from the forest.
This is a single-storey house in Warsaw, planned and built by BBGK Architekci for two devoted travelers. The throughline is movement: a ground-level plan that gathers daily life around an atrium, then releases it toward the trees. Rooms align to a tent-like roof, and the sequence stays legible from entry to garden.
Enter Under One Roof
Everything happens beneath an expansive, tent-like canopy that unifies the plan at grade. You step in and the perimeter glazing immediately brackets the woods, while a sheltered core keeps the couple together without closing doors. Circulation runs short and direct, so the eye reads the whole house in a few moves. It’s compact, but not tight.
Pivot Around the Atrium
At the center sits an inner garden with a retractable glass roof, turning the heart of the house into open sky on cue. The atrium pulls light down and organizes rooms on all sides, so meals, music, and quiet work orbit a living green void. With the roof open, warm air lifts and new air drifts across, lending buoyant comfort and a soft rustle of leaves.
Open the Long Wall
A panoramic sliding window, 22 meters (72 feet) in length, transforms the main living room into a covered terrace in one gesture. When it stacks away, floor and garden read as one plane, and the plan relaxes toward the pines. Cross ventilation sharpens, cooling without fuss, and dusk pours across the ground-level rooms like water. Close it, and the quiet returns.
Courtyards Draw Greenery
Two semi-courtyards bite into the volume from east and west, carrying shade and green depth far inside. These pockets shorten the distance between interior and soil, while they script a calm loop that threads living, cooking, and rest. The cuts also deepen the plan’s daylight, so morning and evening land where they work hardest. Each nook reads as a pause, not a leftover.
Life With Things Collected
Rooms make room for mementos—paintings, small sculptures, and a piano—without crowding the route. Warm finishes of wood, stone, ceramics, and terracotta ground the daily circuit, while the inner garden adds a humid breath that nods to tropical modernism (tempered by the pines beyond). The plan accommodates change, letting objects shift as new stories arrive.
By late afternoon, the atrium glows and the long opening cools to the trees. A few panels slide, the roof edges part, and the breeze settles the day. The house holds still, and the plan earns its quiet.
Photography by Nate Cook
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