OFIS Arhitekti renovates stone house in Slovenia to feel "ancient and alive"
Crisp white surfaces contrast exposed stone walls at The Avber House, a traditional homestead in Slovenia renovated by local architecture studio OFIS Arhitekti.
Situated overlooking the Karst plateau in the village of Avber, the home was designed for a client who was "tracing his roots" back to the place where his family once lived.
This connection informed OFIS Arhitekti's approach of blending new and old, contrasting contemporary timber-lined bedrooms with expanses of restored stone wall, and repurposing original features such as a cow trough turned into shelving.
"The project began as an emotional return – an Australian client tracing his roots back to a small Karst village where his ancestors once lived," the studio told Dezeen.
"Our concept was to revive the client's connection to the site through architecture, to restore a home that feels both ancient and alive," it added.
"We approached it as a dialogue between memory and use – how a rural stone homestead can become a modern dwelling without losing its soul."
The project retains the original layout of a dwelling, stable and outbuilding organised around a traditional courtyard, known as a borjač, which OFIS Arhitekti has united internally.
Its living spaces are positioned on the ground floor, benefiting from a close connection to the courtyard, with a double-height seating area enveloped in exposed stone walls with old troughs at their base that serve as low shelves.
On the first floor of The Avber House, the bedrooms overlook the external courtyard from a traditional covered timber balcony, or gank, and windows sheltered by restored shutters. These are all painted white to blend with the external render.
These original features, including the home's larch roof beams and clay roof tiles, were all restored in collaboration with local craftspeople.
"We reactivated the old borjač courtyard as the heart of the house, a microclimate and social core sheltered from the wind," said OFIS Arhitekti.
"This creates a compact cluster where interior and exterior merge through thresholds and views. Once used for animals and work, it's now a protected outdoor room that binds the ensemble together," it added.
"The beauty of the house lies in restraint – the courage to leave things imperfect, to let the material tell its story. Sustainability here is not a slogan but a natural consequence of reuse and respect."
While The Avber House's more communal areas are finished with rougher surfaces, such as the existing stone walls and speckled grey render, the upper levels have a warmer feel with large expanses of pale timber, including ceiling linings.
The same timber was also used in the kitchen area for worktops, counters, a dining table and a built-in bench overlooking the courtyard.
OFIS Arhitekti is led by Oman and Spela Videcnik. Other projects by the studio include the updating of a stone home on the Croatian island of Cres and a looping extension to a modernist villa in Slovenia.
The photography is by J Martincic.
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