Synergistic completeness of contemporary villa architecture in urban space

Monika Gała-Walczowska

Abstract

A high quality residential area is a unique space in landscapes of historic European cities. Its specific beauty is constituted by natural value, urban composition, but, above all, quality of architecture. Both historically and contemporarily architecture of a town house has been connected with a garden and has been characterized as representative. The synergistic completeness of contemporary villa architecture is constituted by postmodern interpretation of a place. Its character commonly provokes architects into searching of connections between a building, a landform and a surrounding landscape, in scenic and spatial connections with a city or otherwise by visual separation from a street or by selective view cropping. The quality of the presented examples of contemporary villa architecture is defined by individualism of the authors. Each of the architects interprets a place differently and suggests an appropriate architectural form of a house in a space of a high quality urban residential area. The brick villa in Berlin by Davida Chipperfielda is architecture of symbiotic completeness with a place. House R128 in a high quality residential area of Stuttgart is an example of architectural game with a landform, created by the architect and, at the same time, the owner of the house – Werner Sobka. House Susenberg in a high class residential area of Zurich determines a dialog of architecture and urban space. Architecture of Villa Bǎteau-Bǎteau in Cracow by Dariusz Kozłowski and Maria Misiągiewicz, might be called a sign in space of high quality residential area. The synergistic completeness of a town house and urban landscape coexistence constitutes a unique quality of a place, called a Spirit of a Place.