Familiar, Cosy, Innovative – Contemporary Family House in a Small Village

A free reinterpretation of the basic form of vernacular architecture, the curved house, is the result of a recent project by Bényei Studio, a family house that proclaims its timelessness and agelessness with its elements enclosed in a snow-white metal cladding, which form separate functional units.

Although value judgements are always the task of later ages, there are many occasions when a positive assessment of a building can be predicted, and this building, which resembles a group of houses with a traditional roof and massing, and which has elevated the values of vernacular architecture from porch houses to contemporary homes that meet today’s standards, can be a source of interest for contemporaries and for posterity. It is an excellent example of the fact that high architectural quality is not only a characteristic of villa architecture, but that a building that has been executed in a cost-effective manner can also have lasting merit.

Folk architecture was built on a unity of always strict functionalism and restrained ornamentation, and the designers of the family house aimed to capture this duality by exploring and dissecting the basic elements of traditional forms, rather than simply adopting them. The house form familiar to children – the simple gable roof, the 45° pitch of the roof, the ratio of the roof to the height of the house, or the simple surface design – is a reflection of our primary knowledge of family houses.

Rather than following the proportions of curved houses, the designers have gone straight to the task of reproducing their typical dimensions, a gesture that has created a familiar, cosy basic shape that not only matches PREFA’s scaly roof covering, but also, by using it as a homogeneous cladding, has become a decorative motif, a means of attracting attention and even a defining feature of the building’s identity. The cladding forms a shell over the reinforced concrete structure, while the metal sheets covering both the roof and the façade unite the house, which is defined by its primitive, ancient forms. ……