Vuoksa

Guesthouse. The conceptual and functional core of a small country hotel on the bank of Vuoksa, the main river of the Karjalankannas region.

The possibility of converting this guesthouse into private residence, which lies at the heart of our sustainable approach presupposing various scenarios for the future life of the building, defines the functional interrelationship and location of the two cores of the building, the user one and the service one.

The nature context in its turn defines the general configuration of the house.The house is extended along the bank of Vuoksa. The ground floor, partially hidden in the landscape, houses the entrance space and the service rooms. The spaces of the living room and the bedrooms are elevated over the surroundings in the spirit of modernism, and the northern façade is sliced through by stained glass ribbons that open a view onto the river, the rocky outcroppings and the granite boulders overgrown with pinewood, a remainder of a quarry that existed here in the early 20th century.

The eastern wing, supported by a massive granite-coated pylon, is given over to residential rooms, while in the western wing houses the dining room, the drawing room with a fireplace zone and the library in the mezzanine extending along the southern façade in a single skylit space.

The kitchen area, the workplace of a professional chef, in the basic configuration is separated from the dining room. However, it can become a continuation of a common scenario for the whole drawing room through opening a massive movable parting wall.

The color scheme of the facades includes slabs of natural slate for the body of the building, cassettes of stainless polished steel for the first floor as well as massive blocks of raw granite for the pylon supporting the eastern wing of the house.