Eike Becker Architekten

Seget is a small city of just under 5,000residents that at the height of summer is filled with vacationers. It is located just west of Split on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic Sea. Architects have always designed quasi-Arcadian architecture for such places, where steep slopes provide sweeping and distant views. From Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Orianda Palace in the Crimea in 1838, by way of Adalberto Libera’s Casa Malaparte on Capri in 1938, up to the here and now, dreamlike dwellings have always secretly promised their occupants the possibility of a carefree life behind their walls.

A group of five related residential buildings stands on a 3,850-square-meter rocky foundation with an incline of a good thirty meters. The south sides of the buildings look over Seget toward the Adriaticand the Okrug peninsula. Below, on the pine-lined road, a narrow strip of covered parking places shares the entrance to the bumpy terrain. Stairways and paths lead to the central entrances on the north sides of the buildings.

Constructed of site-mixed concrete with coloring admixtures, each building is three stories and stands on a ground plan with seven corners, some of which are sharp, some blunt. One look at the topography clearly reveals that the angles of the buildings follow, as far as possible, the increasing elevation of the site. Noteworthy is the way the floors, walls, and ceilings in each building—with their three long balconies off glass façades—pan from left to right and from right to left in order to provide plenty of shade in the summers. Also memorable is the way these “bands,” owing to their symmetry, capture the staggering of the buildings. Indeed, they connect the left building with the right one in both rows.

Each building has five or six apartments, the third floor consisting of either one or two units. Sizes range from 42.3 to 146.7 square meters.