House with a Tree Inside and a Louvred Façade

This house near Chișinău is built around one idea — a living tree grows inside the building. You see it from the staircase through a full-height glazed window. It’s not a potted plant and not a conservatory. Just a tree, and people live around it.

From the outside, the house reads clearly: two different volumes, one above the other. The ground floor is light and solid. The upper level is dark, clad in vertical louvres. They create a sense of depth and lightness. The upper part doesn’t press down — it floats. The louvre shadows shift across the day, and the house looks different in the morning and in the evening.

The exterior walls use a ventilated cladding system with an air gap. It draws moisture away in summer, holds warmth in winter, and needs almost no maintenance. The system lasts for decades and performs well in the Moldovan climate.

Inside, the house divides by the way people live. The master suite — with a dressing room and private bathroom — sits on the ground floor, separate from everything else. On the second floor: three bedrooms, a home office and a terrace. The living room and kitchen are clearly separated. A garage for two cars is built into the volume. The neighbourhood has strict design rules — and that constraint led to a sharper solution than if those rules hadn’t existed.