The so-called Two-year Plan, a programme for post-war economic recovery in Czechoslovakia prepared by the state planning and statistic authorities in 1946, and implemented between 1947 and 1948, defines the last significant rise of interwar Functionalism in architecture. However, during this era, architects diverted from the original Functionalist ideal of the home as a “pure and fragile box”, giving preference to heavier more robust forms and coarser materials.
Two semi-detached municipal apartment blocks (No. 788–789 and 790–791) are characteristic examples of the architecture of this period in Litomyšl. Both were built between 1947 and 1948 on the southern edge of Masaryk Quarter, according to designs by Prague architects Ferdinand Junek and Vladimír Nevšímal. As they would be the largest residential buildings in the town, the architects decided to divide the facade into sections and added a hipped roof in an attempt to reduce the impact of its size on the slope. The sheer mass of the building was lightened with the help of vertical “cut-outs” on both sides of each block, which incorporated balconies. The only decoration breaking up the facade is the windows of varying size and shape, which mimic the function of the rooms behind them, with vertical glazed areas bringing light to the stairway hall, small windows illuminating the service areas and large divided windows the inhabited spaces.
Each floor of the two-storey buildings contains two generously-sized three-roomed flats with a combined kitchen and dining room. A novelty was the common laundry and pram room in the basement, something that was to become the norm for every apartment block in the near future.
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