Residential House in Kaunas by Architectural Bureau G. Natkevicius & Partners
Residential House in Kaunas stands in a forest-fringed neighborhood of Kaunas, Lithuania, where Architectural Bureau G. Natkevicius & Partners shape a concrete house around ancient pines. The project turns a suburban corner plot into a quiet, inward-facing dwelling that still holds the surrounding forest close, using cast-in-place concrete and sharp geometry to negotiate privacy, light, and views. Inside and out, nature stays present in every daily routine.
Pines rise beyond the low suburban roofs, their trunks catching the shifting light against a steady gray mass. Cast-in-place concrete holds the corner lot, turning toward the forest and folding around a sheltered court.
This is a house in a residential district of Kaunas, where Architectural Bureau G. Natkevicius & Partners work with heavy concrete and delicate trees as equal partners. The project is a single-family house that treats structure as sculpture, using a myth-inspired form and precise openings to carve out privacy while pulling nature directly into everyday life.
Located at the junction of two streets and surrounded by low-rise homes, the dwelling responds to noise, neighbors, and a remarkable stand of ancient pines. Two sharp-edged volumes, drawn from the pattern of the traditional Laumės juosta sash, intersect on the plot and create a closed inner courtyard that turns away from the street and toward the forest.
Casting The Concrete Sash
The house reads as a fragment of woven fabric scaled up in gray concrete, its intersecting arms forming a strong, almost graphic outline. Cast-in-place construction allows continuous walls and crisp corners, so the volumes feel carved rather than assembled. The material has a slow, matte surface that takes on shadows from the tall pines, turning each day’s light into a changing pattern across the mass. In this setting, concrete does not shout; it recedes so the trees can hold the eye.
Shaping Privacy And Court
The triangular geometry is not only expressive form; it is a tool for privacy on a busy corner. Built mass works as a shield against street noise and direct sightlines, so the family can live around the court instead of the road. Within this protected void, life turns inward, with rooms arranged to face the enclosed garden and the wall of distant pines beyond. The inner courtyard becomes both buffer and living heart, dense with shade and quiet air.
Glass Planes To The Forest
Toward the pine stand, the heavy shell gives way to large glazing that stretches across the living area. These tall glass planes frame trunks and sky, letting residents watch the forest while remaining hidden from passersby thanks to the building’s angled form. The contrast between solid concrete and transparent surfaces underlines the house’s logic: mass where privacy is needed, openness where nature is the priority. Interior routines unfold with a constant backdrop of vertical trees and filtered light.
Birch Grove At The Terrace
At the center of the terrace, a small birch grove grows within the concrete outline, turning a piece of the forest into an interior companion. Through the surrounding glass walls, slim white trunks punctuate views from the living room, so the seasons register in bark, leaves, and shadow at arm’s length. This planted pocket sets up a double reading of nature: the distant drama of tall pines and the intimate nearness of birches rooted inside the home. Everyday movement between rooms passes this grove, folding landscape into circulation and rest.
As the sun shifts, tree shadows slide over the concrete, softening hard lines and marking time across the volumes. The house holds its corner with a measured presence, letting the forest and the courtyard do the talking. In this balance between cast-in-place weight and living grove, privacy and landscape move together through the day.
Photography by Lukas Mykolaitis
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