A House With a Green Roof Tucks Into the Landscape in Lithuania

By designing a home with an angled roof covered in sod, architecture firm After Party takes living in the land to the next level.

Text by

Lauren Gallow

Published by

Dwell

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Although this home is situated in a suburban neighborhood, the radical bermed design by After Party conjures something much more pastoral. "When we first visited the area, there were no houses around, only a blossoming meadow filled with bees and little insects," says architect Gabrielė Ubarevičiūtė, who designed the 1,600-square-foot residence with firm cofounder Giedrius Mamavicius. Ubarevičiūtė continues, "Knowing that it would turn into a living neighborhood in the future, our main aim was to preserve what was already there and find ways to compensate for our intrusion to the local biodiversity."

Photo by Giedrius Mamavičius

The result is House and the River, a project for a young family that embraces its surroundings to knit together architecture and nature. But therein laid the challenge for the firm: The site is situated in a middle-income suburban area, with the south side facing the local road and Soviet communal gardens; to the north, the site descends to a lush creek.

Photo by Giedrius Mamavičius

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Photo by Giedrius Mamavičius

To reconcile these two opposing conditions, the architects conceived the home as a sliced-in-half volume, with a layer of grasses sheltering living spaces below. "We wanted to create a space that seamlessly merges with the natural setting and expands the living environment from inside to outside," says Ubarevičiūtė. The home’s main volume is intersected with a large wood-clad terrace, which is shielded from neighbors by the sloped green roof that touches all the way to the ground on both sides. "It creates a feeling of solitude and framing life within nature as if it’s a living room under an open sky."

Architect Gabrielė Ubarevičiūtė designed the House and the River—a 1,600-square-foot family residence in Lithuania—with After Party cofounder Giedrius Mamavicius. "We wanted to create a space that seamlessly merges with the natural setting and expands the living environment from inside to outside," says Ubarevičiūtė. The home’s main volume is intersected with a wood-clad terrace, which is shielded by a sloped green roof that touches all the way to the ground.

Photo by Giedrius Mamavičius

Inside, the architects took inspiration from the idea of a white cube, employing a restrained material palette. A pop of bubblegum pink on the kitchen island provides a moment of buoyant play. "The interior space acts as an ascetic background for living, filled with domestic furniture and objects that each bring their own unique character to the space," explains Ubarevičiūtė.

Photo by Giedrius Mamavičius

With the dramatic roof slope covering the common living areas, the resulting spatial volume draws visually and physically out to the terrace beyond. "The heart and main driver of the house was always the river," Ubarevičiūtė says. "The verdant sloped roof facing the river was immediately inhabited by local bees, and it helps make the intersecting terrace intimately connected to nature."

Photo by Giedrius Mamavičius

On the whole, the home is a clean slate for the family’s life to unfold. "Taking life from sealed, conditioned indoor spaces to the outdoor environment, we create spaces to experience the full spectrum of sensory engagement that nature offers," says Ubarevičiūtė. "By removing the barriers between the home and nature, we make it part of the everyday."

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