House in Lanškroun / Martin Neruda Architektura

Text description provided by the architects. In a residential area in Lanškroun, Czechia, Martin Neruda designed a new atrium ground-floor house in place of a demolished two-story terraced house. The client‘s wish was to live in close contact with the garden. The new house consists of a cascade of interior and outdoor spaces that follow the gently sloping terrain of the south-facing plot. The main part of the house is separated from the street by translucent polycarbonate volumes of the garage and garden storage.

Between them, we pass under the concrete roof overhangs into the atrium. The life of the house takes place around this secret garden, and from there the inner spaces can be entered. Between the atrium and the south garden is the main living space – the heart of the house, the background for cooking and relaxing. In summer, the living space can be opened up to both the north and south and turned into a roof connecting the two gardens.

The volumes of the individual rooms are set in terracing levels in the ground, the whole house and its structure cascading down. The stepped reinforced concrete ceiling slabs have generous overhangs that protect them from the sun and rain while creating pleasant spaces at the edge of the house and garden.

Natural materials and muted colors are used in the construction to contrast with the materials in their raw form. Concrete ceilings, lintels, and window sills are balanced in the rooms with ash partitions, oak or velvety pink poured flooring, and soft green curtains. From the garden, we can see concrete, lime-stained bricks from the original demolished house, beige wooden window frames, and polycarbonate, and steel columns.

In the future, perhaps the walls will grow green, the steel columns will rust, a patina will appear on the concrete, and silhouettes of stored items will peek behind the polycarbonate. The atrium house will merge with the garden and turn into a small living landscape.