Panoramic House | Winner Designs
Panoramic House by Eliza Schuchovski

Panoramic House

Golden A' Design Award Winner 2024

Eliza Schuchovski's Panoramic House stands as a compelling exploration of the relationship between built form and natural topography, embodying the contemporary architectural ambition to create dwellings that respond meaningfully to their specific sites while achieving formal distinction through material and structural expression. The work emerges from traditions of hillside residential architecture that have long grappled with the creative opportunities presented by sloped terrain, transforming apparent constraints into spatial and experiential advantages. The architect appears to have embraced the cantilever as both structural solution and expressive gesture, projecting the upper living volume outward to capture expansive views while creating sheltered space beneath and articulating a dynamic dialogue between mass and void, weight and apparent weightlessness. The material palette demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how surfaces age, weather, and interact with changing light conditions: the warm wood cladding will develop patina over time, its tones deepening and silvering according to exposure, while the stone maintains more stable chromatic character, grounding the composition with geological permanence. The fenestration strategy reveals careful consideration of prospect and refuge, with generous horizontal glazing offering panoramic connection to the landscape while solid walls and deep overhangs provide shelter and thermal regulation. The twilight capture proves particularly revealing, as the transition from natural to artificial light transforms the dwelling from sculptural object to inhabited shelter, warm interior glow suggesting domestic comfort within the bold geometric envelope. Viewers might contemplate how architecture mediates between human desire for shelter and prospect, between the impulse to occupy landscape boldly and the wisdom of responding sensitively to environmental conditions that long preceded any human intervention.

Panoramic House was designed for a family in search of a new lifestyle in the seaside. An atmosphere of belonging and identity, a panoramic view of the sea, elements of Brazilianness and an ecofriendly construction were some of the premises of the project. The building was camouflaged, in order to enhance the landscapes, through a contemporary architecture of pure elements and horizontal lines enriched by prominent points. Through parametricism, they carry originality and authenticity.