Project: Weekend House in Bukovany
Architects: SENAA architekti
Author: Václav Navrátil, lead architect; Jan Sedláček, lead architect
Design Team: Kateřina Zabadalová, Jan Gadziala
Location: Czech Republic
Completion year: 2021
Built-up Area: 98 m2
Gross Floor Area: 142 m2
Usable Floor Area: 115 m2
Garden: Jana Zuntychová
Photographer: Alex Shoots Buildings
Courtesy of SENAA architekti
The house lies in a pleasant wine cellar lane with limited access for construction equipment. We had to abandon the original reconstruction plan after the actual condition was discovered. The new building respects the footprint and shape of the old house.
The house could be conceptually divided into several layout and structural parts. The bedroom, bathroom and toilet occupy the brick part – originally a living area. The glazed living room stands on the site of the former goat sheds and is structurally a steel structure. The superstructure is made of wood and houses a sauna with a relaxation area.
The house uses every bit of the steep sloping plot. On the 230 m2 area, in addition to the house itself, there is a bike shed and above the roof terrace, there is a swimming pool tucked into the slope with a panoramic view of the surroundings.
The house has a traditional morphology but combines modern details with historical technologies. For example, we set a hand-hewn loft ceiling into a steel structure, which continues into frameless large-scale glazing. The interior plaster is coloured and polished without any additional surface treatment. Another distinctive softening element are the rounded corners of the window lining and lintels. We also applied a traditional Japanese folk technique of charred wood shou-sugi-ban and the entire superstructure of the sauna house on the roof terrace is treated in this way.
The mixture of the variety of details and the overall layout creates an architectural experience of the space and shows the possibility of implementing modern architecture in the historical context of the cellar lane.
