Project Name: House on the Edge of the Plain

Location: Murska Sobota, Slovenia

Design Team: Skupaj Arhitekti

Total Floor Area: 120 m²

Completion: 2025

Photography: Ana Skobe

Design Features: House on the Edge of the Plain, designed by Skupaj Arhitekti, stands as a masterful expression of structural clarity and landscape integration nestled at the edge of the Murska Sobota plain in Slovenia. This 120-square-meter single-family residence exemplifies the perfect balance between distinctive three-core structural system and fully open facade configuration, redefining spatial generosity and architectural site relationship under strict planning constraints.

The project's most compelling design achievement lies in its intelligent structural strategy. The project confronted strict local urban planning regulations governing siting, scale, and height. Skupaj Arhitekti's design response transformed the structural constraints into spatial advantages, creating a completely flexible floor plan. This strategic inversion not only optimized space utilization but also closely linked physical limitations with modernist legacy, functional requirements, and landscape experience.

The architectural narrative unfolds through sophisticated structural organization, demonstrating remarkable spatial choreography. Three reinforced concrete cores accommodate the bathroom, utility spaces, and kitchen, functioning as both structural supports and technical hubs. These cores carry a flat reinforced concrete slab with edge beams, freeing the remaining floor area from load-bearing elements and enabling a fully open, flexible plan. Living and dining spaces face the southwest garden and terrace, creating a direct physical and visual connection to the landscape. Private sleeping and working areas are oriented toward the quieter northeast garden. A long, double-sided storage wall separates and connects these zones, organizing circulation without disrupting spatial flow.

The project's defining architectural element is the innovative fully glazed corner system, demonstrating remarkable engineering design intelligence. A subtle fold in the roof structure at the northwest corner introduces a raised beam, creating a fully glazed, structurally liberated corner. Together with a large timber sliding panorama window on the southwest facade, the house can open entirely to the garden, reinforcing its pavilion-like character. This glazed corner serves not only as a technical achievement but becomes a core element of spatial experience, dissolving boundaries between interior and exterior, bringing landscape into the heart of daily life.

The material treatment demonstrates the refinement of exceptional craftsmanship and site connection. Exposed concrete facades and interior walls, cast with local Mura river gravel, create warm, tactile surfaces that reveal traces of reused formwork and the construction process itself. Polished concrete floors, built-in furniture, reused chairs, and simple lighting maintain a restrained interior, while a compact cast-iron stove anchors the living space in winter. This design approach fully leverages the inherent characteristics of materials, creating authentic and honest living environments. The localized treatment of material selection serves not only as a sustainability pursuit strategy but becomes an important element of spatial narrative, allowing the entire residence to present clearly layered textural and tactile dialogue.

The design achieves quiet confidence through structural honesty, material truthfulness, and careful detailing rather than seeking monumentality. House on the Edge of the Plain's defining feature is its contemporary interpretation as a mediator between everyday life and landscape and innovative spatial practice. The house is not designed as an object, but as a framework that allows life, light, and landscape to shape the space. This framework serves not only as a functional solution but becomes a core element of spatial experience, transforming planning constraints into design opportunities. The project proves that thoughtful design can create living spaces that feel spacious and open under strict limitations through strategic structural planning and innovative material application, while maximizing connection with the surrounding landscape.

Design Team: Founded in 2009, Skupaj Arhitekti is a Ljubljana-based architectural practice distinguished by its commitment to clarity, material honesty, and contextual responsiveness. The firm, led by Tomaž Ebenšpanger and Matevž Kutin, has established a reputation for designing refined residential projects that balance modernist principles with local building traditions.

Prior to founding their own practice, the two founders honed their expertise through years of architectural practice, developing a design philosophy rooted in structural precision and restrained materiality that embodies a contemporary interpretation of architectural clarity. The firm's leadership team specializes in comprehensive architectural services including residential architectural design, interior design, landscape integration, and spatial planning, continuously exploring relevant roles for architecture by deeply investigating site characteristics.

The practice has garnered significant recognition within the international architectural community, earning the Golden Pencil Award 2021 for outstanding realization in architecture and landscape architecture for A House for Modest Living, the BIG SEE Architecture Award 2022 Winner for A House for Modest Living, the Nomination for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe Award 2024 for A House for Modest Living, the Nomination for the international PIRANESI Award 2021 for A House for Modest Living, and the BIG SEE Interior Design Award 2020 Winner for A Nest Above the Big City. Multiple firm projects have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, architectural galleries across Europe, and Central European architectural exhibitions. The firm's work demonstrates consistent exploration of spatial clarity, material honesty, and the integration of architecture with landscape, establishing a distinctive voice in Central European contemporary architecture.

Skupaj Arhitekti, as a full-service architectural practice, demonstrates proficiency across diverse typologies, encompassing residential architecture, apartment renovations, memorial facilities, planning and design of Alpine architecture, planning and design of various residential projects, landscape integration, and spatial product design. Through a diverse portfolio spanning from private residences to public memorial spaces, the firm has established new paradigms in contemporary Central European architecture, demonstrating consistent commitment to creating genuinely humanized environments. For the studio, architecture should eliminate superfluous elements and focus on essential needs. The studio incorporates this principle to achieve spatial clarity from structure to materials, evoking a sense of calm and precision, guiding occupants to experience space in an honest and direct manner. Its award-winning projects confirm the firm's exceptional standing in contemporary Central European architectural practice. The studio's designs are firmly grounded and speak the language of context, yet display subtle and unexpected individuality. With its design philosophy, the studio strikes a balance between structural clarity and material truthfulness to create possibilities of quiet restraint.