It may appear directly from a fantasy novel, but this surrealistic COB house in Kazakhstan is far from fiction; In fact, it determines a blueprint for the redesign of the old building techniques for today's sustainable architecture. “When people come across our house for the first time, they have difficulty believing that it is a residence,” says Dilyara Mazhitova. “Most assume that it is a public space – a restaurant or a retreat. People simply do not build houses like this.” Kazhitova's house is indeed unique in the vicinity of Almaty against a mountain side in the rough Alatau region in the area of Almaty. In the 1950s and 1960s or the rustic Dwellings of Tolkien Mitte-Earth, he reminds the cavelike villas designed by Maverick Frencharchitects Jacques Couëlle.
In fact, the inspiration of the house is very elsewhere. Mazhitova and her husband Vladimir Radostovets designed and built it with the help of a handmade construction team and an interior design. The couple was originally a lawyer, but that is only a fraction of his talents: Mazhitova has since become an entrepreneur, project manager and art dealer, while Radostovets is also a building contractor and inventor, especially in the field of sound engineering. The couple even built a factory that specializes in geosynthetic materials. Many of these creative strands turned out to be important when radostovets had a radical idea one day: to build a COB house from scratch.
What is a COB house?
COB houses are an old form of the adobe construction around the world, which was mainly made from natural materials such as sound, sand, straw and water. They are very ecologically efficient, generate little waste and have natural insulation properties that reduce energy consumption. You can quickly build durable enough to survive centuries: the first plan was that this house was built over three months. However, this was not the way things were out. “Vladimir bought several books about Cob Construction and started studying the topic,” recalls Mazhitova. “In the end, the project lasted over 10 years when the house turned into a feat that we shaped, modified and perfected.”