Golden A' Design Award Winner 2021
This residential work by Shamsudin Kerimov embodies the contemporary movement toward architecture that dissolves boundaries between constructed shelter and natural environment, positioning itself within a lineage of modernist exploration that includes the courtyard traditions of vernacular building cultures and the phenomenological investigations of twentieth-century masters who sought to choreograph human experience through careful manipulation of light, material, and spatial sequence. The composition demonstrates exceptional command of atmospheric conditions, capturing the structure at precisely the moment when artificial illumination within begins to assert presence against the fading natural light, a temporal threshold that amplifies awareness of the dwelling as refuge while maintaining visual connection to the surrounding pine forest. Technical achievement manifests in the seamless integration of the preserved tree trunk within the courtyard volume, a gesture that transforms potential obstacle into poetic centerpiece, drawing the eye vertically through the space while acknowledging the site's existing ecological character with respect and sensitivity. The material vocabulary speaks to considered restraint, warm-toned timber providing overhead shelter and acoustic warmth, textured concrete surfaces accepting shadow and light as ornamental expression, and minimal furniture selections establishing functional clarity without visual competition. Thematic resonance extends to universal meditations on dwelling, shelter, threshold, and the human desire for spaces that simultaneously protect and connect, that offer prospect while ensuring refuge. The sculptural light fixture visible at left, with its branching constellation of illuminated points, introduces organic geometry that echoes the natural tree form nearby, suggesting dialogue between artifice and nature, designed object and living organism. Viewers might contemplate how this work invites reconsideration of contemporary residential typologies, proposing that luxury emerges through spatial generosity and material authenticity rather than through ostentation or excess.
The house with a total area of 1000 sq. m is located in Repino, Leningrad region. The project had one strong stylistic limitation: all the residences in that villa community had to be in a Wright-like style. The result is a completely original project but with consideration of this requirement. The house is well integrated into the landscape. The aim is to preserve as many existing trees as possible; some of them will go through the canopies to create a unique rhythm and better architecture and nature relationship.