This is a two-story family apartment in Vilnius Old Town, Lithuania. Located in the Užupis neighborhood, the 140-square-meter apartment occupies the second and third-floor attic space of a three-story apartment building.
The inherited structural wall in the middle of the apartment and the associative openings in it created a challenge to design a space without making changes to the building structure. It was decided to highlight it and build a house around a stone wall, separating the house into social and private spaces.
The inevitability of the structural wall and the associative arched image of the colosseum became the ideological axis of the project. The aim was to highlight the original idea and to keep the concept clean. A particularly striking motif of the arch became a sign for uniqueness. Last but not least was a sense of humor, when a complicated and immovable wall became a Colosseum, because of its associativity. The wall is cladded with natural travertine stone slabs from Italy, just like in the real Colosseum. Timeless materials and shapes were used to create an equivalent counterweight to the main element, the stone wall.
Author: 2XJ architects (Jokūbas Jurgelis, Martina Kriaučiūnienė, Jūratė Volkavičiūtė)
Photographer: Darius Petrulaitis
Year: 2020
