Homes designed as part of real life

The world is changing: from institutions to life in the community, among neighbours, with your own room and your own daily rhythm. This isn't ideology in a vacuum — it's what autistic people and their families themselves want, and what has been proven in practice wherever such models already work.

The problem is that between "living with parents forever" and "moving into an institution" there is almost no dignified middle ground. Adam's Space Grocka is that middle ground: a home where an autistic adult can live independently, but not alone — and a family with a child can get respite without feeling like they're handing care over to a stranger.

Adam's Space is designed so parents can gradually hand over their child's care to a community they can trust — because they're building it themselves. Parents can live with their child or nearby, and gradually help them build a more independent life, with effective but unobtrusive support from professionals and technology.

Grocka is a municipality in Serbia on the right bank of the Danube, about 30 kilometres south-east of Belgrade, combining an administrative centre (the town of Grocka) with dozens of surrounding villages. The drive from central Belgrade takes 35 minutes — unhurried, but not isolated: it's the difference between "living in a village" and "living half an hour from the capital." The area has regular bus service to the city, so you don't need a car to get there.

About 8,000 people live in the administrative centre, and around 80,000 across the whole municipality. This isn't a weekend-cottage settlement or a dormitory suburb, but a full-fledged area with its own administration, history and way of life, stretching along the Danube for dozens of square kilometres.

People have settled on this bank of the Danube since the Neolithic — this was the site of Vinča culture settlements. Today that history isn't a museum display but a living, inhabited environment: the old Grocka Čaršija, a pedestrian street with Balkan-style buildings from the 18th–19th centuries in the centre of Grocka; the Rančić family house from the same period, now home to the local cultural centre; and Orthodox monasteries in the surrounding villages, with their springs and a quiet that can't be manufactured.

The municipality's economy runs on vineyards, orchards and small wineries; the "Vinogradi" restaurant on a hill above Grocka, overlooking the Danube, was already a cult destination back in the Yugoslav era — Tito, Sophia Loren and Henry Kissinger all stopped by. There's no industry nearby, and that's no accident — it's what has shaped the air quality and the pace of this place for decades.

It's exactly this combination — a real, lived-in community with history, not a stage set built from scratch — together with half-an-hour's reach to the city, that determined the choice of site for Adam's Space.

Before designing the home, we studied the site itself — not only its landscape and infrastructure, but also what it lacks and what it can offer. Every decision on this site is weighed against three things at once: how it affects people's lives, the surrounding environment, and the project's long-term sustainability. This isn't a one-off beautification — it's a systematic approach to the site, moving from diagnosis to solution, not the other way around.

Before we finalise the residence formats, we sit down at the table with the families and future residents themselves. Not a survey sent out after everything has already been decided, but a real dialogue at the stage when decisions can still be changed — the daily routine, the mix of shared spaces, the balance between privacy and togetherness, all shaped together with the people who will actually live here.