The house is located on a hill in the highest corner of a village amid an agricultural area in Northeast Bulgaria. The site of the project is distinguished both by its panoramic views and distant visibility. In order to strengthen them, a part of the program is located in the seemingly blind bastion-like volume and the living area is elevated high on it. This brings view completion up to 360 degree and privacy in the fully opened space above. The proportion and the materiality of the solid base give it the appearance of an infrastructural object that define the edge of the village.

We have always tried to make the most of the environment in which our projects exist as a whole and create a seemingly clear and explicit composition in which all the complexity and contradictions of what we found are present. From this perspective, the time, places and people we encounter provide us with infinite possibilities for architectural interventions; and very often some tempting solutions in front of us are just waiting for someone to wish for them. Looking back, we realize that this constant game of challenges led us to certain unexpected results; and widening our notion of an architectural environment, digging deeper and deeper into it, we can easily go beyond it.

I/O architects started in 2004 as a long-distance collaboration between Sofia and Tokyo when Viara Jeliazkova and Georgi Katov developed their first projects. Their work manifests an ambition to combine local experience with external perspective. The design process is marked by sensitivity to the specific context of local landscape, city and society. Reaction varies from admiration to an ironic awareness of the existing inconsistencies. Formal expression is adequately controlled avoiding the risks of transition aesthetics.