AASE GÅRD

OM

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The project located in the southern part of Sandnes is close to a large green area with beautifully situated lake Stokkalandsvatnet. Designed blocks are part of a larger urban concept, a residential quarter, located in the western part of the settlement housing area. Two 4-storey blocks number 25 apartments of various size from 49,5m2 to 89,0m2. The main goal was to design an effective space having a reasonable financial outlay.

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Thanks to a proper set of proportions, the buildings do not overwhelm the environment with its scale and the use of traditional natural materials makes they fit to character of the surrounding buildings. This matching is emphasized also by the colors selected for the cladding. Monochrome colors in shades of grey create a neutral base for other solutions. Although modern but simple architecture of the buildings wooden plank on elevations imparts the whole project someway traditional and unpretentious character. Form of elevations (especially south elevation - the most important of them) refers to correspond with functional plans.

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Shape of the facades was influenced by two factors: the need to protect flats against noise and necessity to provide individual outdoor spaces. Shaping facades using single cubic – which together form a solid grid – creates balconies that provide privacy. Possibility of glazing structures – designed in this way – effectively preserve both the balconies and the flats against possible noise. Balconies, that don’t require enhanced protection have been separated from each other by openwork panels, which, on the one hand, give privacy, and on the other bring natural light. The interiors of balconies are finished with wooden board, what gives them a cozy warm atmosphere, creating a kind of intermediate filtered space between the apartment and outer space.

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In both buildings were used the same functional, technical and aesthetic solutions that determined the shape of architecture, and made that in a form they are very similar. Despite this clear formal connection they both concurrently show peculiar differences.

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The layout and shape of the frames around the balconies determines not only the southern façades, but also – by their continuation –  the east façades. What is interesting, the same rule of shaping southern elevations created two different eastern elevations. From the side of the access road, the walls of two buildings in terms of color are completely different, like a negative. Such material and color differences also characterize the parallel facades of each block. The bright north elevation clearly contrasts with the dark gray base of the south wall, and the dark eastern elevation with the white west. Color contrast is clearly visible within a single solid, while both buildings in terms of form and color are characterized by overall consistency and homogeneity. The use of such clearly contrasting shades of grey creates the impression of fragmentation shapes, which gives them a lightness and delicacy eliminating any illusion of solidity. Distinct contrasts characterize also other elevations.

Doors and windows frames are distinguished from the color of walls. All these various measures have engendered not only a simple and modern architecture, but primarily an architecture that respects the context of the place and cre­ates convenient conditions­­­­ for life.