Housing for the eldery Královka

Academy of Fine Arts, Prague

Project idea

The design is mainly determined by the antithetical relationship to Podbělohorská and the Dlabačov Park. Thus, from the front the house acts as a serious palace and from the back as a soft residential façade. „Business in the front, party in the back“. The expression refers to the Pyramida Hotel opposite. It is not inspired by it, but rather takes its compositional and material elements and translates them into
a world of elegance. I set myself the ambition to interpret the Pyramid‘s expression. To be at the same time a mediator or a link between the elegant Břevnov block and the Pyramid Hotel. I see it as the only way to save the hotel. The design on the one hand takes its horizontal composing of yellow and black panels and plays them out in a sentence of diversity. It also takes on the materiality of the black tiles and yellow plaster. The house is bulky, so the facades must not appear monotonous. I want the house to constantly surprise you when you walk around it, but still keep a uniformity of principles, similar to Hans Kollhoff‘s Piraeus housing block in Amsterdam.

The house faces Belohorska Street like a palace that graduates to the centre, a portal to the passage. The façade of the left wing responds to the opposite buildings jumping on the ground, so the cascading is not only vertical but also horizontal. The left wing ends with an open parterre and a blind gable to symbolise the backdrop of the gables in the square. The façade of the right wing is a counterbalance to the Pyramid Hotel, so it is predominantly horizontal with significant cascading on all sides. The end of the right wing is executed on columns, it is supposed to be a typical Prague buttress. The front facades are vertically divided into three parts, a black parterre with a high order, a plastered strip with glazed areas and tambour windows of the flats on the last three floors. The different parts interact with each other and in some places intersect. The facades are topped with heavy historicizing cornices that create a palatial character. The façades are contrasting light yellow and black and are therefore accentuated by coloured awnings and shutters. Large-scale glass surfaces punctuate the interior spaces, pool, fitness room, atrium or hall.

Project description

The most important theme of the project was to formally turn to Bělohorská Street, and in turn open up to the park. The house has a very urban attitude towards Bělohorská Street. Bělohorská Street is significant as a series of stacked hospital palaces, modernist apartment buildings, and finally the Pyramid Hotel. The proposed housing is to become another in a series of palaces. The palaces are significant for their horizontal composing. This signifies the importance of the function of the individual houses. For an ordinary apartment building this palace-like expression would be inadequate. However, this is a mixed-function house, and it is the premises describing the facade of Bělohorská Street that are accessible to the general public. The proposal certainly responds urbanistically and expressively to the Pyramid Hotel opposite. Thus, rather than simply being a quality solution to the site, it perhaps sets a higher ambition to integrate the Pyramid Hotel into its context. Just because we don't like it doesn't mean we should ignore it. "Right or wrong, it is your Pyramida". The Pyramid Hotel creates unnecessary non-urban space in front of it. The proposal attempts to balance the proportions of this space by addressing it with its tallest seven storey façade. This creates a trio of tall buildings that between them define a new space or plaza. The Pyramida Hotel, the tower apartment building at the corner of Bělohorská and Pod Královkou Streets, and the housing for the elderly designed by me. The proposal thus becomes the antithesis of the Pyramida Hotel, and thus an imaginary gateway to Břevnov.
The house, on the other hand, opens up towards the Dlabačov Park. This is not only because of the views and contact with nature, but rather because I perceive a certain picturesque or softness of the place at the southern entrance to the plot. Thus, the house has the ambition to be a soft extension of the park rather than its hard end. It is a semi-open block , the footprint of the house resembles a U. The last side that closes the block I understand as a row of existing mature trees. The centre of the block and also one motif of the opening is the existing steel staircase, which both dominates the courtyard but is also integrated into the house by extending and passing through the house via a long horse staircase connected to Bělohorská Street. The design retains the existing tram turntable line. The tram bypasses the central part of the house, which is therefore designed to be the most bulky. The two side wings are carried on columns. At the intersection of Za Strahovem and Šlikova Streets, the house does not form a corner, but is slightly angled towards the existing mature trees. It creates a mint informal clay plaza. Similarly, the house behaves on the corner of Gymnastická and Bělohorská streets, where it allows the valuable existing beech tree to stand out and thus also creates a space in front of the house, specifically in front of the supermarket at this location.
The solution of the street profile of Bělohorská Street is based on the current study.

Technical information

The house is constructed from a series of transverse wall beams, which are also an acoustic barrier between the individual apartments. On the lower floors, where looser layouts are needed, the walls are carried on columns and spans. An anomaly is the spatial truss ceiling structure of the pool, which gives it a more planar load-bearing capacity as well as an expressive richness in the interior. The ceilings are mostly precast reinforced concrete spiroll beams. The façade is designed as a sandwich construction, which is either plastered or tiled. The solid black cornices are precast coloured UHPC concrete and are anchored to the façade via steel brackets.

On the subject of sustainability, I consider the relationship to the city and visual sustainability to be the most important. I design the house to be as large as the site can support, so that Prague becomes as dense as possible and people don't have to commute into the city. The sustainable quality of the house its typological diversity that supports the city of short distances and opposes the unsustainable zoned city. The house is therefore mixed half housing and half other public amenities or work. The added trades are based on a socio-demographic survey. For example, I propose a supermarket in the middle of the ground floor of the house, which does not exist in the whole of Brevnov. Similarly for the swimming pool. I consider visual sustainability to be an expressive "beauty" that will stand the test of time; the house then has the ambition to stand for centuries and not generate emissions from its demolition or the construction of a new one. The terraced typology offers each dwelling a generous outdoor space that can mimic a house with a garden, encouraging people to stay in the city and not move into carpeted houses. I try to design the house as compact with minimal envelope thus minimal heat loss. At the same time, the least amount of excavation

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