Multi-Residential Building in Zelina
The project brief and the context itself prompted us to reconsider the given typology and offer a different approach to residential housing.
Houses by the stream
A hybrid topography of a multi-residential building and a terraced house, adapted to the context and terrain.
Over the last twenty years, Zelina has recorded a decline in its population. The investor, born and raised in Zelina, wanted to invest in his home region and, in the immediate vicinity of the family house where he grew up, build a building where young families with children could move in. Profit and square footage were not the main focus – it was more important to him to construct a building he could walk past every day with pride, knowing it had become a home for some new residents of Zelina.
The location of the future construction is in Biškupec Zelinski, on the very eastern edge of Zelina. Biškupec is green, wooded, sparsely populated with family houses and fragmented construction, but excellently connected via a road to the north. The Zelina stream flows between the plot and the road. In such a gentle environment, it actually surprised us that the spatial plan allowed for the construction of a multi-residential building.
The project brief and the context itself prompted us to reconsider the given typology and offer a different approach to residential construction.
How to ensure that someone completely new, a young family, would want to move to Zelina?
Owning one’s own home is something deeply rooted in Croatian culture. Once, it was most desirable to own an apartment in the centre of a large city, but today, as we increasingly value a simpler life, living in the greenery of a smaller town attracts a growing number of people.
Offering a smaller house, or rather an apartment that provides a significantly higher standard of quality of life than a classic Zagreb apartment, with its own small yard, seemed to us like an idea that could attract new residents ready to exchange city life for a calmer environment. This is how a multi-residential building with seven apartments was born, each featuring its own yard and three or four rooms that enable quality family living, as well as working from home, which has nowadays become an integral part of everyday life.
The apartments are organised across split levels, primarily to adapt to the terrain’s topography and elevate the living space to the level of the south-facing yard, but also to achieve better communication and a more dynamic spatial experience of the interior. The yard represents an important part of each apartment. It is oriented towards the south and equipped with an outdoor kitchen, a small storage unit, and a pergola that allows for a pleasant outdoor stay.
The apartments (seven of them) are clearly readable as smaller volumes within the larger entity of the multi-residential building and are, in terms of scale, far more appropriate for the rural context in which they are built. The roofs are mono-pitched, sloping, with a cornice running parallel to the street.
The space in front of the entrances is not intended for cars. Instead, a pedestrian walkway extends there, providing a space for uninterrupted children’s play by the stream, while parking is concentrated on a separate section of the plot, away from the immediate views of the apartments. Two vehicular bridges across the stream allow easy access to the apartments, service vehicles, and waste collection, while simultaneously preserving the peaceful pedestrian zone in front of the apartments as a space for encounters, play, and everyday life.
