Designed by Slovakian firm JRKVC in 2013, the IST-Family House is a compact, 85-square-meter home that blends traditional rural architecture with modern living. Located in the village of Čunovo, near Bratislava, the project was conceived with a simple brief: to build a small, affordable family house on a small plot. To achieve this, the architects looked to Slovakian folk architecture for inspiration, resulting in a house with a gabled roof, small, picturesque windows, and a traditional under-roof porch known as a gánok. The house features a lightweight timber-framed structure constructed with Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) for efficient and affordable building. A massive concrete floor serves as an effective heating system, storing thermal energy to warm the interior. To maximize the modest floor plan, the layout is organized around a central plywood "service box" that ingeniously integrates the bathroom, toilet, kitchen, stairs, and storage into one compact unit. The space around and above this box forms the rest of the rooms. The living room's floor area is expanded by a large, north-facing triple-glazed curtain wall that visually extends the interior into the garden, providing a connection to the outdoors without the need for a sun-shading system. A skylight further fills the upper floor with soft northern light. The house's design prioritizes simple, low-tech methods over complicated systems to reduce cost and ecological footprint. Credits Architects: Peter Jurkovič, Lukáš Kordík, and Števo Polakovič of JRKVC Photography: Peter Jurkovič