The Krakow House With Four Windows Is Entered Through the Garage
Architect Tomasz Brzeziński built a house with one window per wall and no front door. Its owners park, step over a tyre and are home.
The doorbell is on the garage. It is the only bell on the plot.
The house stands in Wola Justowska behind a low hedge. It is a grey concrete box, seven metres by nine. Each wall has one window, 1.2 metres square. There is no door. The postman has stopped looking for one.
Tomasz Brzeziński drew his first doorless house eleven years ago. He has drawn about forty since. This is the first anyone paid to build.
The owner is Ilona Sadowska, who sells floor tiles. She asked for a house that felt closed and calm. She got one. She says the first week was the hardest, mostly for the cat.
Entry works like this. The sectional garage door rises. You walk past a grey estate car, a rack of shoes and two winter tyres on a shelf. A plywood panel at the back swings open. That is the hall. It smells of rubber for the first three metres and of pine after that.
Inside, the rooms are pale. The floors are ash. The four windows do the work of the whole house. At midday the sun comes through the south one and lays a square on the kitchen floor. It stays there until about two. The family eats lunch around it.
Brzeziński has no apology to offer and does not seem to be looking for a place to put one. Asked about the front door, he said the garage door is a door. It is a large one. Asked about fire exits, he said the building was approved by the city and pointed at a stamp.
There is a pull-out step in the hedge for guests. It was added in March after a cousin tried the north window.
The plan is clean, and I will give him that. The facade is calm. It is the only house on the street that does not look like it wants anything from you. It also does not look like it will let you in.
Guests have adapted. They text from the pavement. They are told to come to the car. One neighbour has taken to shouting.
Deliveries are left in the hedge, under a tarp. The family calls it the porch.
Tonight is Halloween. Ilona has bought four kilos of sweets and left the garage door up with a lamp inside. At 5:40 the first children of the street reached the gate. They looked at the house for some time. Then they went next door.
