Hanspaulka New Villas

The sloped plot with a southeast orientation offers extraordinary views of Prague. The project of three apartment buildings respects the urban structure of the original development of Hanspaulka. The integration of new, contemporarily designed buildings into the surroundings was also monitored at the architectural level of the proposal, in addressing details, and in the choice of materials used, such as exposed bricks.
The priority of the assignment was to create a pleasant environment for the houses and individual apartments with a high standard of the offered spaces, products, and details. Emphasis was placed on achieving a great individuality of the layout solutions, promoting mutual independence, and a sense of intimacy and privacy in the apartments. The villas are divided into two symmetrical parts with two duplex apartments. Each apartment has a separate entrance from the street and to its own private part of the garden. With these and other attributes and details of the design, the standard of living in the apartment buildings is intentionally brought closer to the standard of living in single-family houses.
The height difference in the floor levels of the western and eastern parts of the villas, facilitated by the used reinforced concrete monolithic wall construction of the building, is utilized to achieve a smaller scale of the building and a naturally asymmetrical composition of the facades. In all apartment villas, the retreat of the top floor is indicated by corner terraces, spatially defined by exposed framework of the construction. This element, expressing various layout solutions of the duplex apartments, or the location of the main living space of the upper apartments, achieved a naturally diverse volumetric solution of individual villas, without losing the universality and uniformity of the buildings in the design.
The intentional pursuit of contrasting parameters – the aesthetic and expressive unity of all three villas and the provision of individual, identity-supporting facade and volume solutions, is a hidden motive of the architectural solution of the proposal at first glance. The ability to express collectively felt values, along with the grounding in the architectural and professional standards of its time, while also showcasing the individuality of each endeavor, is one of the fundamental phenomena that create a specific quality in residential neighborhoods like Hanspaulka.