Polish architectural firm KWKPromes’ “Safe House” located on the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland. Created by architect Robert Konieczny and collaborated with Tukasz Zadrynski and Marcin Jojko; interior design by Magdalena Radatowicz-Zadrzynska. It took a little over a year to complete the design, but four years to build.
Created for a private client whose main focus was maximum security, this home is a cuboid shape but with moveable sections of the exterior walls. The exterior guard walls open to a garden, while the eastern and western walls open towards those exterior guard walls, creating a courtyard. The house has a drawbridge that the occupier must lower in order for visitors to access the safe section of the home’s second floor before being allowed to enter. The plans describe a “safe zone,” where the home is impenetrable; when the home is “closed,” for instance, this safe zone includes only the very innermost cube of the home. When the house is “open” and the walls are engaged to create the courtyard, virtually everything contained within the walls is secured.
Besides the moveable walls, the large shutters move, and the roll down gate that covers the front of the cube is made of white anodized aluminum, which means that when in the closed position it can double as a movie-projection screen. While the structure is namely concrete, the light steel trusses required for the moving aspects are filled with mineral wool, and other aspects of the house are cement-bonded particle board.
The house is designed to mimic the daily life-cycle of a plant, in that when it is open during the day it collects heat into the hybrid energy system and while it’s closed during the night it accumulates the day’s retained energy.
In 2009 the Safe House was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award and Konieczny was named in 2008’s “Europe 40 Under 40,” which recognizes Europe’s emerging young architects and designers. Konieczny’s work is in high demand because he takes something entirely commonplace among his home’s landscape—the traditional Polish cube house—and turns them into absolutely unimaginable superstructures. Never before has someone successfully constructed a solidly concrete home with fully automated moving wings, but Konieczny did so for a private client who wanted privacy and maximum security. We here at MileStone Company aren’t all that different from Mr. Konieczny . We don’t see businesses as entirely commonplace existences among familiar landscapes; we see unique potential in our clients and what they do. Much like Konieczny, we are able to unlock the intricacies of structure—your company’s organizational structure, for instance—to create superstructures never before imagined.
Gloria has a BS in Accounting from Western International University in Arizona and a MA from National University in California. She has taught English language and literature at the primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. She is currently working as a freelance writer and proofreader while continuing to teach.
