In the colourful mosaic of houses lining Kornická Street there is one petite, at first glance unexceptional, single-storey house, with a brick facade, a traditional pitched roof and a slim chimney – a sort of archetype of a Dutch or Danish house – but one whose architectural conception was a complicated process.
In 2004, the Brno architect Emil Slíva was given the task of designing the house by the investors who had been impressed by his projects in Benátky near Litomyšl and in the area of Na Řetízku. The investors required the house to have a practical layout, be of simple design and to tie in with the garden. The architect was given a free reign with the design, but had to adhere to a traditional pitched, red-tiled roof. Therefore, the designer counted on a traditional house silhouette from the start, but added jutting out prism-like struts to the ground-floor side facades and experimented with the modernist facade. The latter was originally to have been from the rough structure of concrete shuttering blocks, wooden cladding, and with asymmetrically positioned, traditionally divided windows of various sizes. The harmony of colour and material was to be then complemented with blue-green window and door frames.
In the end, the resulting design differed significantly from the original. On the first storey, the architect fitted longitudinal corner windows offering panoramic views of the surrounding countryside and town, and the concrete blocks, which displayed insufficient hydro insulation, were clad with brick strips.
In spite of these changes, it is clear that the house was designed by a farsighted architect who, with a minimal budget, proved that a traditional-style family home can be modern and imaginative even without steel cladding, bright paint, immense areas of glass and other atypical building features.
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