Excerpt: Villa in průhonice is a residential project designed by the architectural firm Aulik Fiser Architekti. The brief was not any unusual – the requirement was to design comfortable housing for an older couple with adult children living separately so that their families could stay overnight in the villa from time to time. Designing a villa in Průhonice was somewhat tricky as Průhonice is a very contrasting environment.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by Architect] Working on this project was unique because designing a single-family villa is a particular task. Because our studio had designed a house for this married couple twenty years ago, they have still been living there. The first house was developed in a different situation. It is in another region and smaller, but an already established, more personal relationship with the client existed for our work on a new concept.
The brief was not any unusual – the requirement was to design comfortable housing for an older couple with adult children living separately so that their families could stay overnight in the villa from time to time.
Designing a villa in Průhonice was somewhat tricky as Průhonice is a very contrasting environment. Next to the beautiful chateau with the famous park, there are some not-so-lovely features typical for Prague satellites, such as an utterly heterogeneous development of houses dating from the past fifty years, little integrated into the original rural structure of the village. The advantage is that the street where the villa is designed is right next to the Průhonický park and the link to it is, therefore, more robust than the surrounding development. Also, the fact is essential that the street was founded in the 1970s and the green in local gardens is thus, grown now.
The entire environment is calmed no matter the heterogeneous character of individual houses. The plot size of 1,500 m2 was somewhat restrictive to the design linked to the Průhonice Land Use Regulation Plan specifying the maximum rate of development of 20%. Due to this restriction, we had to position the swimming pool in the basement and, employing more complicated landscaping of the garden, develop such a design establishing an important contact with the garden. The positive feature of the park was grown, three of which the majority could be preserved and reused for the new project.
Since we had not found any existing architectural values in the streetscape to which we would like to relate our design, we opted for a concept of a simple, strict form facing the street to the north and, contradicting it, a more diverse one southwards to the garden. A generous two-storeyed reinforced concrete frame setting up the “high order” and the architectural scale of the whole build is the means linking both different forms of the house (not just the facades).
A vertical modular pattern establishes the north façade reflecting the lower need for fenestration in this direction; the façade is finished with traditional render. The southern façade, from which a discernible wing of the primary living part projects into the garden, is quite different; thanks to its large glass panels, it is maximally open to the sharp relief of the outdoor space. Its cedar siding reinforces the house’s connection to nature and the plot’s environmental intimacy.
An intense interconnection, mingling of the home and the garden, and creating of protected privacy in its part is an essential principle of our design. The garden is planted with the same species of plants as the nearby Průhonický park; the steeper part of the landscape is covered with rhododendrons, like in the park.
The main family areas are on the ground floor, as the client required. There is a large living room and a dining room with a kitchen dimensioned to gather a more prominent family; there are the master bedroom and appropriate amenities here, too. Two guest rooms and a study with a separate street entry are on the first floor. Aside from the garage and technical rooms, there is an eight-meter-long swimming pool with a sauna and a small fitness room in the basement. By its glass wall, the swimming pool opens to the lowered part of the garden, which is recessed to bring pleasure into this part of the house.
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