This contemporary cottage faces the Sázava River in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It is mainly intended to serve as a weekend and summer vacation home. An old small house on the site was beyond repair and was removed, leaving behind a stone basement. Architect Pavel Horák of Czech studio Prodesi designed a new cottage to sit on the old foundation, gaining space by cantilevering the floor on three sides.
Today we visit a small timber framed house in the Czech Republic. It is located on the outskirts of the historic town of Kromeriz, on a long and narrow lot with mature trees. ARCHTEAM worked within the constraints of the lot to produce a design that is closed on the sides but open to the backyard. The architects describe it as being like “a piece of furniture in the middle of the garden”.
This home, called Small House With a Great View by the architects, also has a great layout. It was designed by A1 Architects for a family with two young children. Located on a hill overlooking a village near Prague, the site offers pastoral views of the countryside below and the nearby Tocník castle. The architects followed the local building tradition of modest gable-roofed houses. While the exterior is attractive and welcoming, it is the interior layout that really caught our attention. The house has only 115 m2 (1,238 ft2) of interior floor area but A1 Architects were able to design a small floor plan that packs in a lot of living space, and it is worth having a look at the floor plans to see how they did it.
This small shed-roofed house is at the edge of a suburban area in the Czech Republic. It sits on a steep slope facing to the north. Architect Vladimír Balda designed it with a “reverse floor plan”, putting the living area on the upper floor in order to give it a southern exposure. The lower floor was dug into the hillside so that there could be direct walk-out access from the upper floor living room via large glass doors leading to the south-side patio. The windows on the north side were kept relatively small for the sake of energy efficiency. From the photos in the gallery it appears that the best views are of the neighboring forest to the north-east. We would probably have taken better advantage of those views, but the homeowners placed a higher priority on minimizing energy use and keeping their expenses down.
The 2 PLUS Classic is a one bedroom prefabricated dwelling manufactured by Freedomky in the Czech Republic. Measuring just 42.4 m2 (465 ft2), the 2 PLUS Classic is available with a choice of two different floor plans and with a variety of options and finishes. Other models are available as well, and they can be joined to form larger homes if desired.
