Micro village in Gąsiorowo

Placed in Gąsiorowo in Northern Poland, an agroutouristic micro-village composed out of three houses overlooking a lake and a forest is going far beyond the average standard of rural huts one would assiociate with the notion of agrotourism. The client, who is salso a builder, asked for a variety of small houses below 35m2 in footprint. The interiors were designed and crafted from wood scrap by the very owner. It gave me an opportunity for experimenting with layouts and overall shapes within the restrictions of local, quite severe, Masterplan. The houses have thick walls and heating air-pump that provides electricity-based heating, so people can enjoy the stay all year round.

Most visitors are shocked by the contrast between the external look of thsese houses („how small it is!”) and the feeling of space inside that seems to come from much bigger houses. This surprising contrast I’ve been working on for quite some time, probably since I saw for the first time „Yellow submarine”, where in one of the scenes happening in Liverpool, the Beatles enter into a shed that looks small from the outside and comes out to be a giant interior full of doors and corridors. Intrestingly in Poland today, after pandemics and financial uncertainty, increasingly a lot of people decide to move into houses as small as these rejecting all the obsession of living in excessively big spaces.