Living-garden House in Izbica by Robert Konieczny KWK Promes
Living-garden House in Izbica sits on a hillside plot in Poland, where Robert Konieczny KWK Promes reworks the idea of a single-family private house. The project sets up a clear contrast between an outward-looking ground level and an introvert upper floor, so daily life moves between garden, glass, and protective concrete volumes. This calm tension shapes how the family experiences light, views, and privacy from morning to night.
Approaching from the hill, the house reads as a grounded band of masonry holding a lighter volume above, with the river bend unfolding beyond. Under the deep overhang, lawn and floor pull together so the living room opens wide to garden air while glass still holds the interior line.
This private house in Izbica, Poland, by Robert Konieczny KWK Promes concentrates on how a family lives between open garden and protective shelter. Daily life sinks into the landscape at ground level, then retreats upward at night into a more enclosed realm focused on rest and safety. Program drives the architecture: daylight rooms lean into views and trees, while night rooms pull back into a cocoon held above the rounded base.
Living With The Garden
On the ground floor, the living area stretches along the L-shaped plan, wrapping the garden while turning away from neighboring resort houses. Glass partitions slide between interior and exterior, leaving domestic life almost fully exposed to light, vegetation, and shifting weather. The floor surface flows out under the projecting ledge with grass-mimicking materials, so the threshold blurs and the living room effectively becomes a living-garden. Here, daytime routines unfold at lawn level: cooking, sitting, and gathering stay in constant contact with trees and the quiet river view.
Night Cocoon Above
The upper floor pulls in, both in geometry and in attitude, forming the nocturnal cocoon that gives the house its dual character. Bedrooms rise above the rounded base, set back from the edge so the overhang shades the garden and reinforces the sense of shelter below. Open garden life during the day contrasts with this more introvert realm, where smaller openings and thicker walls support privacy and a feeling of distance from the landscape. The family moves upward at night, echoing the ancestral pattern of seeking height and enclosure after sundown.
Embracing Hill, River, Trees
The house occupies a hill above a river bend, and the plan leans toward the southern view while screening off nearby summer houses. An L-shaped ground level draws a loose courtyard around the garden, with a separate garage body closing the edge so the main lawn stays quiet. Existing trees stay in place, shaping the rounded outline of the ground floor that bends rather than cutting through old growth. Architecture adapts to trunks and roots, so the daily route through house and garden passes under canopies that predate the building.
A Room Between Worlds
The pivotal zone is the shaded strip under the projecting upper volume, where solid ground-floor walls stand opposite transparent glazing. Under this ledge, garden, terrace, and living room compress into one elongated room on the verge of two worlds: domestic interior on one side, open landscape on the other. Families sit, walk, and play here in a band of shadow and reflected light, held between concrete mass and thin glass. Everyday acts stay simple, but the setting constantly reminds occupants of that deliberate hinge between exposure and retreat.
As day drops toward evening, activity slides from the outward ground level up into the quieter rooms above. Light thins over the river while the shaded living-garden cools and the upper cocoon settles into darkness. The house keeps this rhythm legible, tying contemporary family life to an older cycle of working in open air and resting in elevated shelter.
Photography courtesy of Robert Konieczny KWK Promes
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