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Concrete Flower Opens and Closes with the Passing of the Light

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The Safe House, set in a vast grassy parkland, is almost Kafkaesque. It is by the innovative Warsaw architect Robert Konieczny of KWKPromes, who designed the much more accessible White Cube House with Grass Roof.

Perhaps he really has locked into the zeitgeist of his client, and this menacing quality is just what the customer wanted. Or maybe this strange,  concrete house has something to do with the regional roots of the Polish architect – But he looks cheerful enough.

When the house is closed the safe zone is limited to the house’s outline. Sliding walls seal everything in tight.  Both the concrete and the steel sliding elements are insulated with rock wool, and covered with 15 mm slabs of waterproof alder plywood, that has been stained the identical dark gray. The movable elements are made of a light steel structure, so it is not moving concrete. But it is made to feel like that. It is menacing, a fortress.

Even the gardener must stand and wait in a now enclosed space like a prison yard before being admitted, with no option for escape, should he decide to bolt after all. The walls have now grown closed around him, sliding out from the fortress.

Then his solitary project awaits. Many old houses in the region are constructed of the same weathered gray plywood…

…but they don’t have drawbridges that fold up at night, or huge gigantic garage doors that seal everybody in at night…

…while, in the process, creating a giant movie screen.

In the morning, the gigantic garage door rolls up, opening the  front of the house to the sun.

During the day – like a monstrous concrete flower opening and closing with the passage of the light as a result of opening of the walls, it expands, in an almost organic rhythm, absorbing warmth and storing it against the coming of the night.

And swimming is safe, enclosed in a glass box.

Rolling doors lock it down good and tight at night, making an impenetrable fortress that secures it against… something.

Source: If It’s Hip