Raketa and Tria Studio Pull the Istrian Landscape Inside a Concrete and Oak Hillside House in Slovenia

Some sites do half the design work for you. House Malija sits on a hillside above Slovenian Istria with a view that runs toward Croatia, the Sečovlje salt pans and, on clear days, the Italian horizon. Raketa and Tria Studio, with lead architects Katjuša Kranjc and Rok Kuhar and landscape architect Mitja Škrjanc, completed the 271 m² family house in 2024. The obvious move on a plot like this is a glass box pointed at the sea. The architects resisted it.

Their guiding idea, which they call "outside within", is easy to say and hard to build. What makes House Malija worth your attention is the method. Instead of dissolving the walls, the team multiplies the in-between zones: covered terraces, perforated concrete screens, glass block, gravel gardens and deep window benches. The house does not erase the boundary between inside and outside. It turns that boundary into a series of rooms you can occupy.

A Garden That Climbs With the House

The landscape is not dressing here; it organises the approach. Concrete steps climb between a roughly plastered wall and beds of gravel and grasses, and a stepped path runs below the side facade. You arrive slowly, at an angle, with the sea held back until the house is ready to show it.

Škrjanc's planting palette suits the place. Gravel, grasses and slender trees tolerate the dry coastal summer and read as continuous with the scrubby Istrian hillside rather than a lawn dropped onto it. Stepping stones crossing the gravel bed in front of the garden facade keep the ground porous and walkable, so the edge of the house feels like a field you can wander into.

Terraces as the Real Living Rooms

If you want to understand this house, start on the terraces. The covered concrete terrace, fitted with timber-framed glass doors and sheer curtains, faces a gravel garden and a lap pool. In Mediterranean midday sun, this shaded slab is where daily life actually happens, and the architects have treated it with the same care as the interior.

Two devices do the heavy lifting. A perforated concrete block screen throws striped shadows across a dining table, filtering light and views without closing them off. Elsewhere, a glass block wall and a built-in concrete bench enclose a second dining terrace. Both are cheap, durable and familiar materials, used to tune privacy and light rather than to make a statement. This is a sensible kit for a hot hillside, and it gives the outdoor spaces the feel of rooms.

The Living Floor Faces the Sea

Inside, the ground floor opens up. An oak kitchen island, cane pendant lamps, a blue sofa and a concrete fireplace share one continuous space, with cypress trees visible beyond the kitchen and floor-to-ceiling glazing framing the sea from the living area. The fireplace anchors the room and gives the panorama a counterweight, so the view does not swallow everything.

The photographs keep returning to diagonal sunlight raking across floors and furniture. That is not just good photography. It shows a plan that brings in strong southern light and then relies on surfaces, oak, concrete and soft upholstery, to absorb and warm it. The palette is restrained enough that the light becomes the main material.

Circulation Without Corridors

The circulation spaces are where the house is most consistent. The entry passage combines cane-panelled cabinet doors with an oak bench and leads you straight toward the blue sofa and a glazed sea view. A corridor lined with an oak cabinet wall ends at a glazed timber door, with window shadows striping the terrazzo floor. Every route ends in light or landscape.

We like that storage has been folded into the walls of the passages instead of being pushed into closets. It makes the corridors thicker and more useful, and it keeps the main rooms clear. The oak-lined stairwell continues the logic, looking down toward the living room and out to the hillside beyond.

Cane, Oak and the Craft of the Edge

The woven cane balustrade panels set in oak frames are the house's signature detail. They are light, slightly translucent and tactile, a soft alternative to the glass or steel rail that most contemporary houses default to. The cane reappears on cabinet doors, which ties joinery and structure into one material language.

The smaller details follow the same thinking. Slim oak pulls on a white built-in wardrobe, a perforated roller blind at the stair window: these choices let the interior filter light the way the exterior screens do. The perforated block outside and the woven cane inside are cousins, and that consistency is what makes the concept convincing rather than decorative.

Bathing With a View

Upstairs, the private rooms keep the landscape close. An oak-panelled bedroom nook has a window bench framing the sea, with a linen curtain and the edge of a bathtub in the foreground. Putting the bath this close to the sleeping area and the view is a resort move, but the timber cladding keeps it domestic and calm.

The bathroom itself is handled with the same economy: a glass-enclosed shower, a timber-clad tub, a slatted oak bench, a floating vanity and an oval backlit mirror. Nothing is oversized. The luxury here comes from the window and the material warmth, not from square metres.

Plans and Drawings

The plans confirm a clear split. The ground floor holds the open living and dining area, kitchen, stair, utility room and a carport, so the public life of the house sits at garden level. The upper floor gathers the bedrooms and bathroom around the stair, with two square pergola frames drawn onto the site. A further upper-level plan shows a dark rectangular volume and stair core beside a furnished room and a long terrace.

The sections are where the hillside logic becomes legible. One shows a gabled house stepping down the slope, with an attached flat-roofed wing; the other cuts through a three-storey block with a study-like middle level. Read together, the drawings describe a compact building that follows the terrain rather than fighting it, and a gabled form that nods to local roofs without imitating them.

Why This Project Matters

Panoramic coastal sites tempt architects toward maximum glass and minimum thought. House Malija shows another route. Raketa and Tria Studio treat the view as something to be managed: framed by a fireplace, filtered through concrete block, softened by cane, and taken in from a window bench rather than a wall of glazing. The result is a house that feels open without feeling exposed, which is exactly what a hot, bright Istrian hillside demands.

The lesson for you, if you design houses, is in the thresholds. Covered terraces, perforated screens, glass block and deep joinery are modest tools, and none of them is new. Used consistently, from the gravel garden to the bathroom bench, they turn "outside within" from a slogan into a spatial strategy. That consistency, more than any single image, is what makes this house worth studying.

House Malija by Raketa and Tria Studio (lead architects Katjuša Kranjc and Rok Kuhar; landscape architecture by Mitja Škrjanc), Slovenian Istria, Slovenia. Area: 271 m². Completed: 2024. Photography: Žiga Lovšin.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.