Wooden house under Red Gorge

BUILDING INTENT:
The house is prepared for year-round living for a young entrepreneur, and in the future, it will serve as a recreational object for a young family in close proximity to the house where the investor's parents live. The construction site was chosen on the grounds of an old gamekeeper's lodge (LP 1880) under the Red Ravine at the end of a forest path between Dobřichovice and Lety. A characteristic feature of the building is the exposed wooden column structure and the vision of an open Japanese space, the fulfillment of which will be taken care of by the user. The large open interior space is only optically divided into 6 zones by the exposed supporting structure of the wooden building skeleton: - Entrance with a shoe cabinet and wardrobe;

• Kitchen area;
• Dining area;
• Living area connected to the terrace;
• Sleeping nook.

The only space that is spatially separated and also structurally stands outside the main skeleton of the house is the sanitary facility, which is designed as a single tiled room with a bowl in the floor, again without further division. The bathroom contains a sink, toilet, shower, boiler, and washing machine. Above the bathroom is a small attic storage space.

CONSTRUCTION SOLUTION:

• The foundation consists of concrete footings that support the house with a floor approximately 30 cm above the ground.
• The floor is a thermally insulated beam construction.
• The upper structure is a "clean" wooden building. The wall ventilated sandwich two by four with boarding cladding serves as the infill for the skeleton superstructure made of solid wood, both interior and exterior, from exposed columns made of logs, which are sourced from the nearby forest and processed on the construction site.
• The roof is an exposed rafter beam structure with above-rafter thermal insulation and a ventilated double layer, roof covering is made of slate, and roofing elements are made of copper.
• Heating and hot water supply is ensured by a gas boiler on LPG, with a gas storage tank in the garden behind the house. Heat distribution is provided by underfloor convectors. Additional heating - fireplace stove.

FOR EXPLANATION:

If you want to understand this family house and experience at least a part of its wooden soul, you must forget that new family houses in our country usually arise in colonies of subdivided agricultural land with minimal connection to their surroundings and the genius loci. You must forget about cheap projects of typical houses that impose dysfunctional urban solutions for plots and schizophrenic layouts of interior spaces similar to panel houses. You must forget about Porotherm, Bramac, plastic windows, and other standardized building systems that, contrary to the content of their aggressive and instinctively appealing advertisements, are in fact inappropriate and limit the architectural and technical solutions of the building. And finally, you must forget about most developers who, out of laziness and necessity to secure their income, will do everything to keep things that way under the false pretense of protecting the client's interests for as long as possible.

Rather, imagine that the architect - I call him that more out of inertia and because I don't know a more accurate equivalent in Czech for a creative construction manager with a general building education - does not design anything but rather chooses a suitable concept in an architectural study.

Next, imagine that the investor trusts the architect and says yes to all his experiments. He doesn't mind if something isn't perfect and some details turn out well only on the second try. After all, he knows that his house is like an exotic mistress before whom he isn't ashamed to kneel and take a screwdriver, drill, grinder, or tiles into his own hands.

Imagine that the builder - a carpenter and occasional self-taught joiner, sculptor, electrician, and plumber - upon being asked to go into the woods to gather fallen trees and process logs on-site to build a rough structure without expensive drying says: "Why not...?"

Imagine that the entire house comes into being through the joyful, spontaneous, and organically creative work of all involved. That all details and material choices are sensitively determined throughout the construction, and that construction costs and quality of execution are very carefully monitored. Attention is paid to ecological solutions, operating costs, and potential removability of the work. And believe it or not, construction investment, despite the experimental approach, does not exceed initial estimates and remains below the usual price per m2 for standardized construction.

I assert that the quality of execution is directly proportional to the time that the architect - project manager - spends on site. If the client is prepared for an experimental build, the house can be constructed in such a way that we start by choosing a concept – preferably documented in the architectural study – and solve everything else during the construction through creative construction supervision. Although you may not know exactly what will emerge at the beginning, if you are prepared for such uncertainty, you will be rewarded with an unforgettable experience from the truly creative and enjoyable construction of your unique and one-of-a-kind house.