I sometimes catch myself gazing through somebody’s window when the dark falls, being completely transfixed and perplexed by the life going on behind the thin layer of glass. Admiring how somebody’s existence is unraveling before me like a movie, without them being so much as aware of my presence. I know this sounds a bit stalkerish, but I find it kind of magical. Especially when we are talking about apartment buildings. So many people living next to each other in their tiny little boxes, unaware (or are they really?!) of all the buzzing going on just behind the closest wall.

The K-House (created in 2017-2018) plays with this exact idea. The beautifully framed windows showcase the life that happens behind them, as if it were a piece of art, making a whole edifice a metaphor for a museum. The raw concrete walls of this multi-apartment building are supposed to represent a typical gallery space – the white cube – subtracting the observer from his or her context. This goes together well with the whole philosophy of IRWIN art group, which created the black frames around the windows. Their retroavantgarde movement speaks of symbols that are meaningless on their own, but gain strong visual language when being observed.

The architectural bureau behind this masterpiece is ARK Arhitektura Krušec (Lena Krušec, Tomaž Krušec, Vid Kurinčič) and this successful game of art and architecture won the BigSEE Architecture Award 2020 for residential architecture. Rightfully so.