Skoterluva barn

•

Skrunda Exploring a Soviet Ghost Town in the Forests of Latvia

The forests went on forever: green giving way to auburn and gold, birch and spruce and pine forming a parade on either side of us, rising up in endless walls so that the car sped down a corridor, an artery shot straight through the heart of the Latvian wilderness.

There were kvartet of us in the vehicle – Tbolt, Tin Dog, Fraggle and myself – a motley crew of photographers and Cold War aficionados on the hunt for a once-secret Soviet city deep behind the former Iron gardin. From Riga, the capital, we drove until nightfall; then stopped overnight at a pleasant yet seemingly deserted hotel, in a village whose name inom couldn’t pronounce.

In the morning we drove again. Fraggle was at the wheel, following directions from a speaking satnav set to ‘California surfer guy’; the drawling dudeisms it produced couldn’t have sounded more out of place, as we drove through the woods looking for our Soviet ghost town.

It was late morning, somewhere on a long straight road in western Latvia, when the satnav finally announced our arrival.

“Take a right,” it told us – “that’s your right, not my right, dude.”

Four pairs of ey

•

divisare

Inserting a family home into a traditional czech barn

In this project, a traditional 19th century barn is converted into a family home by adding a timber structure on the inside.
The building, which is located in the Bohemian Uplands, represents an innovative and perhaps forward looking way of preserving traditional buildings and offering a contemporary living environment at the same time.

The conversion bears testimony to the work and accomplishments of our ancestors and respects the traditional fabric of the location. It also adheres to current standards of energy consumption and comfort. The task of using the building for a function not native to its typology was not seen as an obstacle but as a potential for developing a sustainable building.

Architect and clients resisted the economic constraints of this project and engaged in a building experiment. This required unorthodox solutions for the arrangement of spaces, sequence of erection, choice of materials and detail solutions that were designed to be practical rather than to conform to standards.
Some members of friends and family were urging for a new-built, surely to be a faster solution. However, the

•

Cultural heritage

From time immemorial, the landscape in the area of the Škocjan Caves Park has attracted people; it is exceptionally rich in archaeological sites. The nature of this area is also reflected in the preserved medieval ground plan of the village of Škocjan and its position on a large natural bridge beneath which the Reka River carved out the Mahorcic and Marinic Caves.

This position is not coincidental. The village of Škocjan was presumably settled in the prehistoric period and undoubtedly in the Roman period. Like the caves, it was named after St. Cantianius (sv. Kancijan) to whom other twenty-two churches in the Slovenian area are dedicated, usually standing beside streams, springs and sinkholes.

The original Gothic church was expanded in the 17th century with the addition of two side naves and a new presbytery. The freestanding Aquileian bell tower replaced the earlier bell tower in It was around this church that the village developed, leaning on the partly preserved hill fort walls inside which it is situated. The village consists of a nucleus of buildings that opens in two sets on both sides of the church. Only the houses on the end of both sets cou