Blank has developed a second prize winning competition proposal for an artist retreat in Pavilosta, Latvia.

The site is located in the middle of the flat agricultural landscape outside Pavilosta, a small fishing village in southwestern Latvia, where the local climate with cold winters and a limited growing season has taught the locals about resource efficiency and how to protect themselves from the forces of nature. Living with and protecting oneself from nature. The long-term relationship between people and the land has created a meaningful cultural landscape with a simple, utilitarian beauty. Building in such a landscape asks for a deeply rooted relationship between the building and the landscape.

Enclosures brings together the program (spaces for visiting poets, a dining room, exhibition space, terraces, staff accommodation) under a large, unifying wooden roof that wraps around a closed communal monastery garden, facilitating the interplay between isolation and community inherent in the program’s structure. The writer needs isolation, physical or mental, to sort impressions and impulses into coherent ideas and stories. But for isolation to be productive, contrast is needed — a sense of community and context, being part of a professional collective, not being alone.

All functions are accessed through a dimly lit corridor that serves as a filter between the garden and the interior. It functions as a connective tissue between the various functions placed along the perimeter of the circle. All private rooms face outward and have unique views of the surrounding fields. The entire building hovers just above the surrounding fields.

Enclosures is imbued with a sense of simplicity and asceticism. The structure is made of laminated timber columns and beams, with surfaces of planks made of core pine and pine plywood. The cabins are intimate spaces, compact and robust. They contain the necessities of everyday life: a pull-out bed, a wood stove, a small area for making coffee, space for firewood storage, space for storing clothes and belongings, and a fixed desk. Everything is designed for simple living and minimized choices. A place to focus; a place to retreat and reframe the world.