Philippe Herkommer

The aim of the project is to investigate the potential of territorial structures with regards to forms of housing that might exhibit a new understanding of context, landscape and nature. These territorial characteristics will determine the project.

Located in Poland, the ghost town of Pstrąże was formerly occupied by a military basis until 1945 and then abandoned. Today this area is still out of use .The town is surrounded by an endless pine forest that is mixed with the old military area leading to consider that ruins no longer concern a group of building but have reached a territorial scale.

The project propose an architectural answer to these phenomenons of obsolescence and permanence. It’s based on a permanent steel structure offered by a philanthropist that found beauty in that place and wanted to give the opportunity for people to live and experiment it. The structure considers all directions equal and is linked to a secondary technical building for water and electricity. The experiment starts when you leave your ordinary comfort, all your heavy and superficial objects and arrive in this place with only what you really need. You start by walking through the forest to this little building and clip two wires for water and electricity. Now you can express yourself, think of how you want to live, which relation you want to have with the ground, the trees, the structure, the horizons. This in a landscape without human scale where this silence is visible, where you are completely free in your thoughts and your way of living. A silence that you can break by yourself with music…