Nida House
A concentric and non-directional structure formed by four rigid frames, with eight continuous columns that allow for open corners in every floor and other eight that step up regularly in the two elevated levels. This is a balanced sequence in which every floor is symmetrically protected by the following one. The foot of each exterior column is slightly misaligned from the perpendicular beams, thus their heads seem to outline decorative triglyphs. The building is a monolithic piece that supports an entirely confined framework within a compact figure, producing a flat landscape from within, dense and almost mechanically stratified. Throughout an eccentric spiral staircase there is a transition from the smallest and shaded storey, compartmented in quadrants with an access in the central crossing point, to another storey diagonally divided by a block of furniture and, in the highest level, to an open and diaphanous plan, although filled with corners, where an informal aerial life can unfold. From the top, the visual relationship with the inferior floor is imperceptible, to the point of cancelling any contact with the natural ground. This veiled logic of an inverted gravitational adjustment (a classical “entasis”) timidly emerges on top of the surroundings foliage. In between the darkened reinforced concrete grid there is only native wood for platforms, furniture and large glass panels of fixed or sliding window frames. Perhaps, due to its artificial weightlessness, despite natural efforts descending through the very centre, along a thick core, experiences always tend to be suspended against the solid shadows of each perimeter, against silhouettes backlit by the sun, or rather because of the seduction of their immaterial reflections.
