“Every year, huge amounts of isothermal refrigerated semi-trailers withdrawn from the market are imported to our country,” says architecture firm Znamy Sie. “Poland is thus becoming a cemetery for these disused trucks. Our project, prepared in cooperation with Good Spot, involves upcycling, i.e. increasing the value of the material and changing the purpose of cold storage to hotel rooms. By renovating the trailer, we give it a second life!”

The founders of Good Spot hired Znamy Sie to realize their vision. “The idea was born during a kitesurfing trip to Hel, where the key is to follow a good wind,” they explain. “What if the hotel room could move around? What if it could stay in places offering the best conditions and closeness to nature?” Thus, the first mobile hotel chain in Poland was born.

Each portable camper unit began as an abandoned, rusted-out trailer in need of some love. And while shipping containers have thin steel walls, requiring a lot of modification to be comfortable in hot and cold weather, these trailers already had well insulated shells. The architects were able to preserve a surprising amount of finished interior space (about 100 square feet) after cladding the interior walls and adding custom-built wood furniture, including storage, benches, kitchen counters, and a bed platform.

Spacious windows in the living and sleeping areas let in lots of natural light, which bounces off the bright white walls and makes the interiors feel larger than they are. The units offer not just one, but two sleeping areas, one at either end of the trailer. At the center of each one is a bathroom painted bright blue offering a toilet and a large rain shower. A metal gangway leads up to the entrance and doubles as a terrace outside. And of course, the exterior is wrapped in stainless steel sheeting to give it the feel of a more angular classic Airstream trailer.

Currently, only one unit is fully complete, but you can reserve it now on the Good Spot website. Three additional units are currently under construction and expected to be made available soon. Each unit will have a slightly different design and can be moved around Poland to tourist areas that don’t typically have comfortable accommodations. The design aims to “blend with nature without disturbing the landscape – it does not overwhelm with its form and does not compete with the surroundings.”

Good Spot founders Przemysław Kwiatkowski, Paweł Kołtunowicz, and Roman Sokołowski, who run the Hotel Service 24 company, came up with the idea before the coronavirus pandemic, but now say mobile lodging is the way to go in any circumstances. Ideal for vacations, the Good Spot trailers could also be rented by people who work remotely so they can enjoy quiet surroundings in nature and even host small meetings.

The team explains that they “change the former cold stores into three-star hotel rooms. We renovate the entire trailer with a running gear. We renew its technical elements, strengthen the entire structure, and arm its chassis. Thanks to this, each room is reborn and can travel thousands of kilometers on the road. By combining the comfort of hotels with mobility, we shorten the distance to nature as much as possible.”

The post Poland’s First Off-Grid Mobile Hotel is Made of Upcycled Refrigerator Trailers first appeared on Dornob.

“Monka Apartments” offers a beautiful example of this process in the medieval town center of Torún, Poland, which has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A centuries-old Gothic granary with beautiful bones offered an interesting possibility for conversion to housing, but its layout presented a few challenges. Originally designed with industrial usage in mind, the building features numerous large round-topped windows through which sacks of grain were once moved in and out of each level, but the ceilings are low, and the internal rooms lack access to natural light altogether.

Architect Pawel Tatara teamed up with the firm Znamy Sie to design nine new apartments on the second, third, and fourth levels of the building, with the ground floor being occupied by Monka Restaurant. The two knew they wanted to preserve as much of the historical structure as possible, with minimal modern interventions being made, but the client wanted the residences to have a bright, airy, and decidedly more contemporary feel.

Many developers would have simply inserted single-level apartments into each floor, but the results would have been dark and dreary, especially toward the center of the building. This team chose to remove some of the floors and ceilings to create multi-level lofted apartments instead. The result is a mix of apartment sizes and styles, with some smaller units mostly occupying a single floor, a few with lofted bedrooms, and a few more spacious ones stretching all the way up into the building’s gabled top floor.

Because most of the original structure was left intact, each unit is entirely unique, enjoying its own individual character. To both enhance this uniqueness and unify the apartments while ensuring that daylight streams all the way into the building, the architects added a colorful steel volume to the interior of each one. These “cubes” contain the bathrooms and divide the space between the living areas and bedrooms. Both the color of the cube and its geometric motif, inspired by the stained glass windows of the Cathedral of St. Janów, are unique to each unit.

“Due to the unusual history of the city, the architectural detail has become the inspiration for the project,” says Znamy Sie. “Nine apartments were designed on three floors. On the second and third floor, there are two-story apartments with mezzanines. On the fourth floor there is a one-level, but with locally high ceilings illuminated by roof windows. As a result, higher and better-lit living spaces were obtained. The project refers to the unusual character and climate of the city of Torún. Each of the apartments is completely different, which is largely due to the irregularity of the old building but above all from the individual detail.”

“Certainly stained glass windows will create a unique atmosphere in the interior, becoming a non-obvious element that changes in the direction of the sun’s rays. In the apartments, the historic features of the building have been confronted with modern materials and elements of interior design.”

The post Heritage Granary in Poland Transformed Into Modern Apartments first appeared on Dornob.

They note that “with over a dozen years of knowledge and an experienced team, our studio is ready to respond to the changing needs of customers, [including] in the form of remote cooperation.”

HOLA Design’s best-known projects are its reworking of residential houses and apartments. These projects are not your basic facelift, but delicate renovations of unique, upscale, and dynamic spaces that can only come as a result of extensive training and experience. The firm’s work has led to their being recognized seven times at the European Property Awards in recent years.

Even with a breadth of services and expertise available, the team at HOLA Design is all about letting the customer steer the ship when it comes to elements particularly important to them, saying that “we care for satisfaction of our clients, fitting presented design ideas to their guidelines and expectations. Deliberate creation of friendly spaces to user needs is our objective.”

One example is this house in northern Poland dripping with a modern appeal and an extra dose of cozy. Teardrop lighting highlights the glass-partitioned floating stairway inside the home to perfect an already open and flowing vibe. The color palette of gray, black, and brown invites one space into another and gives life to the zen-like environment.

An HOLA-designed mountain cottage sitting along the shore of an artificial lake, on the other hand, brings a rustic shingled vibe to the exterior of the original A-frame structure, alongside craftsman-style features in the engraved front door and extensive woodworking inside.

In stark contrast is the Apartment at Złota 44, which boasts a monochromatic beige and cream interior that’s anything but boring. In fact, this home’s dynamism is apparent in every piece of angled furniture, expansive window, and eye-catching ceiling it contains. Lighting throughout is also striking, illuminating the attention to detail present all throughout the space.

Clearly willing to make a statement, HOLA Design takes all the elements of a good idea and puts them into a cohesive vision for results that are always simple, flawless, and functional. “When presenting our projects on Facebook or Instagram, we often use two hashtags: #answertheneeds and #forceofdiversity,” explains the firm. “It communicates our thinking about design in a condensed form.”

Not all HOLA Design work is residential, of course — as is the case with this one-of-a-kind modern furniture store showroom. The multi-textural space incorporates stone, stark white walls, bookcases, feature lighting, and a butcher block wood table to balance style and creativity.

Through their efforts to develop spaces that blend functionality with innovative, original design, the team has won countless accolades, including a 2017 Bronze A’Design award, a 2017 German Design award, a 2018 Innovative Architecture Iconic award, and a 2018 Red Dot award.

The post Poland’s HOLA Design Makes Sleek Interiors for Everyday Spaces first appeared on Dornob.

Opting for a two-wheeled navigation tool over a gas-guzzling machine also means saving money and time you might otherwise spend waiting at traffic lights and driving around town trying to find a parking spot where you won’t get ticketed. Pair all that with increased community interaction, and it almost seems like biking can’t help but make for happier citizens. That’s why in Poland, TPA Instytut Badań Technicznych Sp. z o.o. has created a solar-powered bike path that illuminates under the night sky to encourage riders to keep indulging their good habits even after night has fallen.

Inspired by Studio Roosegaarde and their own 2014 glow-in-the-dark lane in Eindhoven, Netherlands, the Starry Night bike path is made from a similarly luminescent synthetic material called phosphor, which lights up in the evening after it’s been energized by the sunlight. The material stores this energy over a long period of time, allowing the path to shine for over 10 hours before it needs to naturally recharge again.

The self-sufficient, cost-effective bike path is located near Lidzbark Warminski, and while it was originally devised to ensure the safety of cyclists at night time, it’s gone on to attract a lot of attention from tourists keen just to ride on a futuristic looking track, becoming a bit of a novelty in its own right. The whole thing cost $31,000 to install, and although it was completed back in September 2016, it’s still under supervision due to the uncertainty of its longevity under the wave of visitors who are currently using it. The 330-foot-long luminescent lane is split into two six-foot-wide sections, allowing both cyclists and pedestrians to use it side-by-side throughout the park.

Although the phosphors can radiate different colours, the town mutually decided that they wanted this particular path to radiate blue in order to match the nearby lakes — and of course give a nod to one of Van Gogh’s most famous works of art, The Starry Night.

The post Take a Starry Night’s Ride on This Glow-In-The-Dark Bike Path in Poland first appeared on Dornob.

Safe but Unfulfilling Choices

Morski began his career right after he graduated from the Interior Architecture and Industrial Design Faculty at the State Higher School of Fine Art (now known as the University of Arts) in his hometown of Poznań, Poland. His first professional job was in public broadcasting, where he designed and built sets for popular Polish television shows centered around commentary, theater, and culture.

From there, Morski took center stage as a press illustrator, creating nearly 1000 illustrations for a range of renowned international magazines, including Wprost, Newsweek, Businessweek, Businessman Magazine, Focus, American Deloitte Review, Australian, Prevention, Money, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, and George. His work has earned him many impressive honors, including Communication Arts Excellence Awards in both 2008 and 2010 and an Applied Arts Award in 2010.

Breaking Out

Almost 10 years after college graduation and 20 years after beginning life as a press illustrator, Morski ventured out on his own in 1995 and opened a graphic design studio, Morski Studio Graficzne, in Poznan. In a 2013 interview by Emma Rose of Sunrise Artists, Morski explains how his career beautifully transitioned from business illustrations to the surreal art he’s now best known for.

“My surrealism has appeared a little bit by accident. For 20 years I have been working as a press illustrator. Most of this time I have been associated with the Polish weekly magazine Wprost,” he said.

“The beginning of cooperation with Wprost coincided with the decision by the publisher of this magazine to illustrate with only one type of illustration, based on photo manipulation. This, I must admit, made a great impression, because people were not familiar with Photoshop, and many illustrations were taken literally, as if what was shown in the illustration was really true. This was especially true of photomontages with politicians. The fact that since then I have worked on photographic material has caused surrealism to appear in my work. The mere fact of depicting everything upside down has made me a surrealist.”

Morski’s Inspirations

Rose then asked what inspired his decisions to produce realistically impossible combinations. Morski replied: “Everyone has something else in mind. As for me, it is my part of the brain responsible for imagination which works the best. On the other hand, you can say that my brain works as [a] humorous surrealist, and everything I see is immediately placed down in my own unique way, adding funny contexts so that ideas actually come to me almost immediately. I do not need to spend too much time for them.”

When asked to explain his creative process, Morski clarified: “Creative process, hmm. Due to the nature of the work, topics come to me from the outside. In my head is formed an idea, but it sometimes happens that I have to carry out someone else’s ideas. An important element is the evaluation of the measures and their correlation with the time needed, and allocated budget for a particular project. However, usually, the time is a decisive factor as far as means are concerned. I am passionate about what I do, so the money is not the most important factor for me, sometimes I work ‘outside’ budget i.e. I work for free.”

“Time, however, cannot be stretched and the fact is that it actually decides on the choice of means and the method of implementation. In cooperation with the press it often means making reduction to the project to the point when it is possible to complete it in a given time. To make things on time I have taken many shortcuts, but I have never been late.”

In private, Morski speaks with pride about his two daughters. His personal interests include theoretical physics, cosmology, and genetics. While he invites everyone to enjoy his surreal artworks, he cautions those who new to his work that he’s a big fan of graphic imagery.

The post Igor Morski’s Rich Past Inspires His Surreal Illustrations first appeared on Dornob.

What it lacks in width it makes up at least a little in height and depth – this narrow home extends 30 feet up and 30 feet back from the street.

Designer Jakub Szczesny (images by Bartek Warzecha of the Polish Modern Art Foundation) designed it for artists in residence to spend a series of weeks – hopefully drawing inspiration from their strange environs.

Set in Warsaw, Poland, the building fills in the interstitial space between two existing structures, with a subtly disjunctive facade. Lots of windows as well as tall and long interior spaces help it feel open despite its lack of horizontal dimensionality.

And yes, it has everything you need from a house, including bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, with plumbing made as thin as possible. Per the diagram, a series of stairs and ladders connect disparate levels.

Szczesny came up with the idea while sitting at a cafe, where he spotted a dark crevice dividing two distinctive buildings: a pre-war tenement house, and an apartment building from the 1970s. Beside them was once a wooden footbridge connecting the “small ghetto” to the “large ghetto.”

It’s this wartime history of the place that inspired Szczesny to take on the project for the new narrow house’s inhabitant, Etgar Keret, an Israeli writer whose family originates in Poland. During the war, his mother was trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, and her family died; she later fled to Israel. To build and occupy “Keret House” is to bring her family name back to the city from which it was once supposed to have been removed.

“The most interesting challenges for an architect are always those which require combining a lot of elements with an existing spatial context or budget,” says Szczesny. “Therefore, reduction is an exciting topic – it relates to completely different forms of design and ergonomic organization than those commonly established by design manuals. It’s a kind of equation with many unknowns.”

The post Narrow Warsaw House Measures Just 4 Horizontal Feet first appeared on Dornob.

Those lucky enough to live near an IKEA are probably already acquainted with the budget-friendly, easily modified furniture to be found there. The designers of mode:lina architektura & consulting used off-the-shelf products mixed with custom elements to create the Quotel in Poznan, Poland.

The Quotel – a combination of the words “quote” and “hotel” – was created to provide temporary lodging for people attending the Poznan International Fair.

Thanks to its easily replaceable IKEA components, the Quotel exudes a certain homey feeling. The furnishings are not as nice or as solid as those you might find in a conventional hotel, but they are very similar to those you might find in a home.

Not that the apartment feels exactly like home— and that’s a good thing. The interior balances perfectly between tailored elegance and affordable comfort, but it’s accessible, minimalist and clean, devoid of distracting clutter. It was created especially for the traveler who wants the comforts of home while away from home.

The “quote” part of the rental’s name comes from an obvious place: the words and phrases that adorn the walls. This feature certainly adds to the apartment’s home-like feeling as the artful words replace the bland art typically found in hotel rooms.

The inclusion of IKEA furniture in this budget-friendly hotel doesn’t quite replicate the feeling of sleeping overnight in Ikea’s showrooms, which some people may dream of doing just to experience all the different perfectly organized tiny spaces the retailer comes up with. It’s too sparse for that. But the asceticism of the design is part of the point, and the overall effect isn’t necessarily one of lack.

The apartment’s IKEA outfitting contributes subtly to the feeling that this place is more of a temporary home than just a hotel room. These familiar IKEA components quietly whisper “home” to us thanks to our seeing these items in catalogs, stores and other homes.

The post IKEA Helps This Hotel Feel Like Home first appeared on Dornob.

Some extreme curves and cavernous spaces make this cave-like home in Warsaw, Poland a truly unique sight to behold. The Swing House was designed by architect Dagmara Obluska, who believes that home should be a place where one feels free to breathe deeply and enjoy every moment of being there.

In keeping with her professional mission, Obluska designed this home in a way that would allow for maximum space and minimal harsh corners. Rather, the home is filled to the rafters (and beyond them) with swooping curves, wide open spaces and whimsical but stylish details.

Nearly the entire ground floor of the home is dedicated to a large sitting area. The extremely high ceiling makes the rooms appear enormous while allowing a full view of the sweeping staircase.

The volume of the main ground floor room is amplified by its abundance of natural and artificial light. The massive front window reaches from the floor of the first level to the ceiling of the second level, letting in plenty of sunlight.

The home’s interior is rich with shiny materials such as mirrors and polished marble, reflecting the natural light from the window as well as the artificial lights which are distributed generously throughout the interior.

Although the Swing House is utterly unconventional, it has a very comfortable quality about it. The repeating soft curves provide a kind of womb-like aesthetic, making it seem that coming home to this house would definitely be the best part of the day. See the rest of this architect’s works at her website.

About Dagmara Obluska

“The owner of the studio is a graduate of the Lodz University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Town Planning with the title of engineer, master’s architect. He has been working in the profession of an architect since 1989. She gained apprenticeship in foreign offices (Duesseldorf, Vienna), which was possible, among others, thanks to the knowledge of the German language. He also speaks English and Russian communicative.”

“She worked for many years in a family business, and since 2005 she has been creating her own house, interior and garden designs in her own studio ‘Villanette’. For many years, a member of the Municipal Architectural and Urban Commission in the Michałowice Commune and the chairwoman of the Municipal Architectural Commission in Tomaszów Mazowiecki.”

The post Cave-Like Home in Poland Full of Comforting Curves first appeared on Dornob.

It looks somewhat like a squished spaceship, squeezed into a space that (at its skinniest) is a mere 2 feet and 4 inches wide. And yes, it’s real, and designed to be a full-time residence.

Stuffed inside a side street once packed with trash and graffiti, this Warsaw dwelling by Centrala is composed of plywood panels on a steel frame with foam insulation along the front, top and back of the building.

Neither side needs (nor can afford the space for) much insulating, given that both sides touch existing adjacent buildings. The exterior will be draped in white-painted concrete cloth, both blending into the surroundings (in terms of color) while standing out from them (in terms of material, texture, scale and smoothness).

Water and sewage systems are semi-off-the-grid, operating more like a boat or mobile home than a normal full-time residence. A remote-control stairway extends downward to accommodate entries and exists without displacing interior or outdoor space otherwise.

As for building code compliance: this ultra-narrow alleyway residence bucks (or circumvents) the system, designated an art installation rather than a residence. It is, after all, being designed to be used as semi-permanent guest accommodations for visiting writers – a live-work studio that may be cramped, but is also quite inspiring.

It may look too narrow to be real, but it has, in fact, been built. Here’s a description from the architects, via ArchDaily:

“Keret House is fully functional space in which one can live as well as create. It is located between buildings at Chlodna 22 Street and Zelazna 74 Street. ‘We deeply believe it will become a symbol of modern Warsaw ingrained in its complicated history. The House attracts attention of media from entire world. He hopes it will show the most fascinating side of Warsaw’, said project curators Sarmen Beglarian and Sylwia Szymaniak form Polish Modern Art Foundation.”

“CENTRALA (Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis) is a Warsaw-based architecture and research studio that works with reinterpretations and spatial interventions aimed at renewing the language of architecture. In their architecture research practice, they observe the relations between architecture and natural phenomena. They conceive architecture as a process rather than a static form, and consider gravity, water circulation, and atmospheric and astronomical events as its building materials. In architecture that combines an intimate, human scale with the scale of the planet, they see a tool that can help us tune in to the rhythm of the surrounding world.”

The post Alleyway Abode: 4-Foot-Narrow Live/Work Writer’s Studio first appeared on Dornob.