How can contemporary architecture occupy a steep coastal landscape without competing with it?
This question became the starting point for Enforma’s residential project in Tudorovići, near Budva.
Located on a dramatically inclined site, with the planned access road running along its western edge and open views toward the sea, the project required an architectural response capable of addressing several conditions simultaneously: difficult topography, privacy, orientation, landscape integration and the expectations associated with contemporary residential architecture.
Rather than levelling the terrain or treating its slope as an obstacle, the design uses the existing geography as one of the principal generators of the project.
Project:
Residential Building
Location:
Tudorovići, Budva, Montenegro
Project type:
Conceptual Design
Gross area:
245 m²
Architecture:
Enforma Studio
Beginning With the Landscape
The architectural concept is based on clear, simple forms and a restrained material palette combining traditional and contemporary elements.
The first gesture is a strong horizontal stone base positioned parallel to the contours of the terrain.
Its form refers to the traditional Paštrovići međa — the stone boundary walls that have historically shaped and organised this landscape. Instead of reproducing vernacular architecture literally, the project interprets this familiar element as an architectural foundation.
Constructed visually in rough stone, the base appears as an extension of the terrain itself. It establishes a connection between the new intervention and the cultural landscape while providing a grounded platform for the contemporary volumes above.
This approach reflects a broader principle within Enforma’s work: tradition is not treated as an imperative or a stylistic formula, but as a source of information and inspiration.
Three Volumes Above the Stone
Above the stone base sit three minimalist white volumes.
Their geometry is deliberately simple. Smooth, light surfaces contrast with the texture and visual weight of the stone below, creating a clear relationship between two architectural languages: one associated with the landscape and its inherited building traditions, the other unmistakably contemporary.
The lateral façades remain largely closed.
This is both an architectural and functional decision. By limiting openings between the three volumes, each residential unit maintains a greater degree of privacy from its neighbours.
Toward the sea, however, the strategy changes completely.
The front elevations become extensively glazed, opening the interior spaces toward the horizon and making the landscape a permanent part of the experience of the building.
The contrast between closed sides and transparent fronts creates an architecture that is simultaneously protected and open.
Turning the Slope Into an Advantage
One of the most important characteristics of the site is its pronounced inclination.
Instead of resisting it, the project uses the difference in levels to organise a sequence of spaces, terraces and viewpoints.
The architecture is positioned so that the relationship with the sea continues throughout the building. Views are available not only from the principal living areas but from multiple levels of the project: the arrival and parking zone, accessible roof terraces, bedrooms and the living spaces connected directly with the swimming pools.
The slope therefore becomes more than a technical condition.
It becomes an architectural instrument.
Each change in level establishes another relationship between interior, exterior, terrain and horizon.
Material as a Connection to Place
The material strategy reinforces the same idea.
Stone provides mass, texture and continuity with the terrain. White rendered façades introduce abstraction and precision. Glass creates openness and visually reduces the boundary between the interior and the surrounding landscape.
Together, these materials allow the architecture to move between two conditions.
From certain viewpoints, the stone base appears closely connected to the hillside. Above it, the white volumes remain deliberately precise and contemporary.
The project does not attempt to disguise new architecture as something historic. Instead, it looks for a balance in which traditional material references and contemporary form can coexist without imitation.
Architecture as a Response
Designing on a highly visible sloping site inevitably raises another question: how much should architecture impose itself on the landscape?
Here, the objective was to accommodate the requirements of a luxury residential programme while limiting the building’s impact on its surroundings and on views from the sea.
Its position, orientation, materiality and distribution are therefore closely connected to the characteristics of the site rather than being applied independently of them.
For Enforma, this forms part of a wider understanding of responsive architecture — an architecture whose identity develops from the specific conditions of each project: micro-location, terrain, nature, orientation, architectural heritage and programme.
In Tudorovići, those conditions produced a relatively simple architectural composition: a stone line following the landscape, three precise volumes placed above it, and a sequence of spaces directed toward the sea.
The apparent simplicity is the consequence of a highly specific response to place.
And that is precisely what gives the project its identity.