Nur House

Project idea

A retreat from everything - a house designed as a place of withdrawal and solitude.

Project description

NUR is an Arabic word meaning divine light — not physical, but presence. In Islamic tradition, light is not decoration. It is a manifestation of something greater. This project takes that idea literally.

The Form:
A concrete cube. 8×8 meters, 7.0 meters tall. From the outside — completely closed. No windows. No openings. Four massive walls of raw concrete, silent and monolithic. The exterior reveals nothing. The interior reveals everything.

The Program:
NUR is a retreat house for one person — an artist, a writer, a thinker exhausted by the modern world. A place to stay for 7 to 14 days. No internet. No noise. Only light, rain, fire and silence.
Ground floor (4.0m): open thermal bath, minimal kitchen, fireplace, bathroom.
Upper floor (3.0m): bedroom, private bathroom.

The Light:
The only source of light is the sky. The central atrium is fully open — rain falls in, snow falls in, stars are visible at night. Light enters vertically, unfiltered, directly onto water and bare concrete. In the morning it is soft. At midday it falls straight down onto the thermal bath. In the evening it disappears, and the fireplace takes over.

Four qualities of light define four experiences:
- Zenithal — connection to the sky
- Linear — focus and direction
- Reflected — movement on water
- Diffused — warmth and rest

The Experience:
You enter through a narrow door into darkness. You cannot see the pool. You cannot see the sky. You move through shadow. Then the atrium opens above you — and light falls in. This sequence — darkness to light — is the architecture.

Technical information

The construction is designed as a monolithic structure using raw board-formed concrete for the structural walls. The building features an open central atrium that acts as the primary architectural and environmental element, allowing natural elements like light, rain, and snow to enter the core of the structure directly.

Materials:
Raw board-formed concrete, dark wood, water, and fire. Nothing else.

Documentation

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