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KSENIA'S HOUSE












The building was built at the beginning of the 20th century, around the thirties, as a workers' residential house with two staircases and small apartments. The style of the building can be defined as classicist wooden architecture. The reconstruction project envisages preserving the volume and silhouette of the building, which is characteristic of the Ballast Dam building line and has become its integral part. The project envisages dismantling the volume of the building and building it from scratch in wooden frame structures with facade board cladding.
The project envisages constructing a basement floor under the entire volume of the building, in the central part of which underground parking spaces for 3-4 cars are located, a ramp is built in the left wing of the building from the driveway. The basement floor of the building houses service rooms - a kitchen with auxiliary rooms, which is used for receiving guests, a laundry room, root and wine cellars, a boiler room, several warehouses. The stairs from the basement floor to the first floor are located in the right-hand rear tower. Since the building was originally located on an 80 cm high plinth, window shafts were created for the basement floor, which provide daylight to all basement rooms.
The project provides for the main entrance to the residential building from the Ballast Dam. The central entrance is designed as a recessed niche in the facade plane, since it is not possible to place the entrance steps on the narrow pedestrian sidewalk outside the red line of the street. A balcony is created above the central entrance, which emphasizes the symmetrical silhouette of the building and the new entrance node.
The central entrance leads into the main reception hall of the building, and it divides the symmetrical volume of the building into three parts in plan, according to the silhouette of the facade. The living room is located in the left wing of the building, and the kitchen with a family dining table in the right wing. A veranda is created at the back of the hall, which opens onto the garden with a wooden outdoor deck. The owners of the house can use the veranda as a separate dining room. At both ends of the building, there are single-storey volumes for the owners' offices, with roof terraces above them. The guest toilet is located in the left-hand tower.
There are 4 bedrooms on the second floor of the building, and two symmetrical staircases lead to it from the central lobby. The owner's bedroom suite is located above the central hall on the Ballast Dam facade. The owner's bedroom is accessed through a dressing room, which is illuminated by a skylight, and an extended bathroom is located above the kitchen in the right wing of the building. The owner's bedroom space on the street side is raised to the central roof triangle gable.
The other three bedrooms on the second floor, on the right and left sides, are designed as separate suites, each with its own bathroom and wardrobe. A roof terrace is located above the veranda on the first floor on the evening sunny side of the building's courtyard.
Residential house reconstruction
Riga, Kipsala, Balasta dambis 54
Architects: Zaiga Gaile, Ingmars Atavs, Zane Dzintara, Maija Putniņa – Gaile
Client: SIA “Balasta dambis 54”
Plot area 2083 m², building area 401 m², total area of the reconstructed residential building 691 m²
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