Rocky views: Holiday home in Hungary

The place a Hungarian couple chose for their holiday home is indeed an unusual one, being a former stone quarry. With its rocky and jagged look, it provided Béres Architects a unique and ideal setting for staging stunning views.

Architect: Béres Architects Ltd.
Location: 9730 Köszeg, Hungary

The construction site guaranteed sufficient direct sunlight all year round and convinced the architects with its direct proximity to the jagged rock faces, since this promised not only scenic views of the valley to the south but also stunning glimpses of the rough quarry walls to the rear. 

The resulting small wooden holiday home rests on a platform ten metres above a main road that winds its way through the valley. "An abstract footprint of a family's lifestyle" is how Béres Architects describe its floor plan. A black frame ties two self-contained halves together into a single unit, with the western half housing guest premises and the eastern half the couple's living space and bedroom. Sandwiched between the two is a covered terrace that makes the proximity of the quarry seem particularly present.

Boards of roughly-sawn, black stained larch cover the frame and form most of the outer walls of the house, while the timber cladding on the terrace side to the south is natural in colour. In contrast to the outer appearance, the interior of the house is mainly in white. This neutral colour treatment was chosen to give pride of place to the countless hues of the surrounding environment. Based on a combination of simple means and high-tech solutions, the fixtures and furnishings enabled moderate building costs and ensure low energy consumption.

The first project by Béres Architects to be carried out, the holiday home carries conviction in its extremely sensitive and accomplished response to the landscape, with views not being restricted to the valley to the south but including glimpses of the rear quarry walls for stunning and unusual effects. The married couple for whom the holiday home was designed did much of the construction work themselves over a three-year period.     

Project data

Team: Attila Béres, Jusztina Balázs
Period of planning: 2009-2010
Period of construction: 2010-2012
Usable space: 110 m²