Litomyšl became a second home to Olbram Zoubek. From the 1960s onwards, he came regularly from Prague to the studio he had here in order to carry out his restoration activities on significant local monuments (01-110, 01-93). In 2008, he and his wife Marie decided to buy a building on the outskirts of the small settlement “U Tří kocourů” (At the Three Tomcats), situated west of Litomyšl, and adapt it for recreational purposes. He entrusted the architect Zdeňka Vydrová with its design as she had already carried out designs for modifications to his flat in the town square in Litomyšl.
The historical building and barn, laid out in the shape of a U, had been affected by secondary reconstructions which had erased its original rural small-homestead character. Although retaining the building's original spatial concept, she expanded it by removing unsuitable building interventions, adding new structures and creating communication linkages.
The barn was demolished and replaced with a new building whose mass (of traditional longitudinal layout with a pitched roof) and wooden outer walls are reminiscent of farm buildings of the past. However, on closer inspection, it is obvious that it is a recent architectonic intervention. This is especially evident in the interior where an extra storey has been added.
The facade of the old building features, as reference to the name of the settlement itself, three ceramic cat heads (Drinker, Card-player and Judge). Inside, the brick vaulting has been repaired, the beams have been replaced, and the attic has been made habitable and is illuminated through a row of new windows. The inner courtyard has also been modified and features a glazed veranda and a new passageway connecting it with the garden.
A high stone wall and wooden gates on the access side of the land, and appearing to have been there forever, enclose the premises. Thus the garden, facing towards the forest, has acquired the desired intimacy.
