Smolna. Story about home.

Happy - Park and homes

Text written by: Magdalena Zięba-Grodzka

Frank Lloyd Wright, the world’s most prominent modern architect, was an advocate of democratic, eloquent architecture that was deeply human, which meant it was integrated with the space it was built in and the people it was designed for. He treated nature like an encyclopaedia that designers should learn from and constantly be inspired by. 

Lloyd Wright created over 1,000 designs and built over 500 projects. He combined formal simplicity with bold ideas. In his view, a city of the future – the utopian Broadacre City – should be both everywhere and nowhere, and residential buildings should become one organism with the residents and their surroundings. “No house should stand on a hill or anything like that.”

“Creating a good, harmonious building that is adapted to life and its purposes is a blessing, a gracious element added to the puzzle of life, a great moral fulfilment” - Frank Lloyd Wright

A house should stand next to a hill, it should belong to it. Frank Lloyd Wright wrote in his 1932 autobiography: “Hills and houses should live happily together”. It’s a simple idea, but it is still true today and it has become even more relevant in modern reality, when architects have to tackle the problem of man’s presence in nature. On the one hand, architecture gives nature a human dimension. On the other hand, nature doesn’t need this dimension at all.

Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t want the cities of the future to have centres. He wanted them to spread out naturally amongst nature. Today, cities are in fact more and more expansive, and the notion of ‘living in the city’ is becoming much wider. This brings numerous dilemmas regarding lifestyle, ecological issues and also the ways in which we use cities and their functions. Lloyd Wright didn’t focus on one style because he drew inspiration from the areas that surrounded the new building. 

The most striking example of this is his most iconic creation – Fallingwater house built in 1935 in Pennsylvania. He was also inspired by Taoist philosophy, which emphasised the relationship between people and the spaces that they live in. 

The architects of Smolna Sopot also wanted to refer back to the local area, creating a unity of residential buildings with the natural spaces that surround them – both the ones that were already there, and the ones that were designed as an integral part of the complex. According to Małgorzata Sobótka (Studio Krajobraz): “The idea of this design was to create an evergreen base, which would be an ideal backdrop for the grass and perennials. There are also ornamental fruit trees in the centre. 

The choice of plants was not just driven by ecology, but also by aesthetics. By covering the elevation with charred wood created using the Far-Eastern shou sugi ban method – a noble technique of conserving wood and exposing its structure – we were able to give the subtle effect of the elevation blending in with the landscape...”

The above quote is taken from the exceptional “Story about Home” album.