Collective House in Litvínov

Pre-war efforts of avant-garde architects, whose central problem before World War II was the housing issue, the construction enthusiasm in the liberated state, where the foundations for building socialism were laid, and also local reasons led the investor – Stalin's factories in Záluží near Most – to the intention to build, alongside the usual construction for its employees, a new type of housing in collective houses. They wanted to suitably solve the housing problem for those families where both the man and the woman are employed, so that the woman would be liberated from household chores. Therefore, Stalin's factories announced an architectural competition in 1946 for the construction solution of the settlement "Osada" and for the design of a collective house. The authors of the winning proposal were then entrusted with the development of the final project.

The construction site was very happily selected on a gentle southern slope at the foot of the Ore Mountains, east of Litvínov and south of the sub-Ore road connecting residential settlements with the factory in Záluží, located about 8 km away. The plot is surrounded by greenery, which separates the collective house from the residential settlement. The backdrop consists of the massifs of the Ore Mountains. The original plan included the construction of about seven collective houses along the road, of which only one has been realized so far. Transport to the settlement and the factory is provided by trolleybuses and buses. In the future, an electric fast track is planned, which has already been built to Litvínov from the factory.

The lack of suitable building plots, where a relatively narrow belt of land at the foot of the Ore Mountains is climatically suitable, inevitably led to a solution involving height.

Competition and development of the conceptual project
After viewing the construction site, our basic urban planning opinion was that the entire object must be arranged in such a way that the view of the Ore Mountains is preserved, i.e., not to propose an object as a monoblock across the plot, which would create a high barrier in the landscape, but to divide the program into two symmetrical wings with a lower central building of social services. This achieved a concentrated layout with uniform traffic. We concentrated three-room apartments into slanted wings, and for the sake of saving corridors and isolating individual apartments, we arranged them as duplex apartments, so that in the lower floor there is a room with a kitchenette and in the upper floor 2 bedrooms with a bathroom. In the perpendicular wings, we concentrated two-room apartments with access from the central corridor. All our studies were based on this operational and mass conception. Initially, we treated the wings as inverse brackets facing each other, and after realizing the excessiveness of the building, we reduced the study by shortening these wings by half. Thus, our competition proposal was created, which, in its basic scope, was preserved until realization.

In the introductory object, we utilized the slope of the terrain to create 2 basements, which are on the southern side above the terrain; we shortened the perpendicular wings and increased the distance between these wings. Common facilities were fully retained. Thus, the project of the collective house was created, consisting of a pair of residential wings with thirteen floors. Between them is placed a central building of 7 floors, in which a children's nursery, crèche, central laundry, common dining room with kitchen, clubs, reading room with library, distribution, barber shop and hairdresser, and tailoring shop are situated. The upper three floors house a dormitory for youth. In this part, there is also a heating plant in the second basement. Workshops, gym, and lecture hall are located in the basement of the perpendicular wings. Studios were concentrated in the XI. floor of the slanted wings.

Progress of design work and operations in the house
The further progress of work on the project underwent numerous layout and construction changes. The first technical project developed in 1947 was constructively designed as a fully prefabricated structure with a steel frame. In order to carry out a constructive and cost comparison, two three-room duplex units were experimentally built near the factory in Záluží, both made of steel construction, one fully prefabricated and the other having reinforced concrete monolithic ceilings with infill walls and partitions made of factory-produced thermal concrete blocks. For the fully prefabricated unit, ceiling prefabricates in the shape of a horizontal U were produced, which were stacked into the steel structure. These prefabricates are 450 cm long and 30 cm wide. A heating coil is installed in the lower part of each prefabricate. The external walls consisted of prefabricates 50 cm wide, suspended on the steel structure from window arches to sills. The author of this prefabricated structure was our collaborator Eng. Dmitrijev.

When the comparison of both methods was done, the structure with monolithic ceilings and infill blocks turned out to be much cheaper. The disadvantage of the prefabricated structure was that both the ceiling and infill prefabricates had to be produced manually in wooden molds. Thus, it was impossible to achieve complete accuracy in relation to the steel structure, and the costs for manually manufactured prefabricates were high. Therefore, the prefabricated construction was abandoned. Also, the structure of the central building was changed to the usual reinforced concrete frame construction due to a lack of steel. Furthermore, it was necessary to make a number of layout changes aimed at increasing the number of housing units. Workshops and studios were significantly reduced, garages were eliminated at the investor's direction and replaced by studio apartments. These layout and constructive changes necessitated the development of a second technical project in 1948. In that year, in the spring, the construction of the western wings and central building also began. Execution drawings were developed during the construction, however, so that individual construction details were already resolved in detail in the technical project. During this work, ideas about operations and the scope of services for the residents were also refined. For example, the mechanical central laundry was divided into an individual section with several compartments for families that want to wash themselves and a common section where washing is handled by special forces. The collection and delivery of laundry was solved with lockers accessible from apartment hallways and common corridors. Residents have the option to put laundry into these lockers, from which the laundry service can collect linen during the day even in the absence of the resident.

For cleaning in the house, there is a room with cleaning supplies and a garbage chute to the incinerator in the basement on each floor of the residential wings. The chute pipe also serves for smoke removal during combustion.

In 1950 and 1951, we revised the project of the eastern residential wings to also use reinforced concrete construction employing load-bearing monier walls, as the use of steel construction had become unrealistic. The design of this structure was participated in by the council alongside academician Bechyně. The statics was calculated by Eng. Kostrov. During the revision of the project for this part of the building, attention was again paid to increasing the number of housing units, especially studio apartments. After these changes, a total of 352 apartments are located in both residential wings, of which 100 are duplex apartments with 3 rooms, 172 are two-room apartments, and 80 are studio apartments. The house is now inhabited by 1400 residents, including the dormitory.

Structure, technical equipment, and construction progress
As already mentioned, the structure of the western wings is steel. The construction was carried out by Třinecké železárny. The perpendicular steel beams are coated with cement milk and freely clad with thermal concrete blocks; horizontal parts of the structure are cast in monolithic ceilings. The external walls are also made of thermal concrete blocks, and the partitions are made of 5 cm thick thermal concrete slabs. The ceilings are monolithic and slab-like.

The central building has a reinforced concrete frame structure with slab ceilings, and infill walls of thermal concrete blocks, with partitions of hollow bricks.

The eastern wings are also of reinforced concrete construction. The slanted wing is entirely made from load-bearing monier walls. The perpendicular wing has a combined structure of solid load-bearing walls across two structural fields, between which are columns. The ceilings are also slab-like. The infill walls are made of quartz blocks, as thermal concrete blocks are no longer produced. The dividing partitions are brick.

The windows in the residential wings in the corridors and bedrooms are sliding with the "Dual" system. The windows in the central building and in the loggias are double-glazed, of the usual construction. The floors in the corridors, children's nursery, crèche, and gym are made of cork boards.

The facade is plastered with brizolit plaster, the plinth up to the ground floor and balconies are clad with ceramic tiles.

The heating is central, radiant, from ceiling heating coils. In the II basement, there is a machinery room with boilers for hot water. The boiler room is situated separately and serves several buildings.

In both residential wings, there are four elevators.

The kitchenettes of the apartments are equipped with built-in furniture with electric stoves. Gas is not installed in the house for safety reasons.

The apartment accessories are mechanically ventilated. Some apartments were fully furnished with interior facilities according to the designer's proposal at the investor's expense, which were handed over to the residents in installments. All apartments are equipped with built-in wardrobes.

Construction began in 1947 with the construction of the road from Litvínov to Lom, to which the collective house is connected. In the same year, rough excavations and soundings were also carried out. This part of the construction was carried out by youth construction. In 1948, construction site facilities were built, and the construction of the western wings and central building commenced by the firm Konstruktiva. The assembly of the steel structure of the western wings was carried out in 1949. The rough construction was further constructed by CSSZ n. p. Ústí n. L. This part of the building was completed and handed over for use in 1953. In the same year, preparations for the construction of the eastern wings were initiated. However, upon uncovering the foundation joint, an unexpected geological fault was discovered. Two several-meter-wide cracks filled with mud appeared in the growing rock, deeper than 30 meters. The foundation project had to be redesigned from foundation strips to a solid foundation slab, and the fault areas had to be reinforced with gravel piles. Construction was temporarily halted. In the spring of 1954, specialized hammering was carried out at the fault sites, and then actual construction started, which was completed in the summer of 1958. The built-up space amounts to 150,000 m³.

Years of work on this task have been completed. We worked and also fought with enthusiasm, overcoming all obstacles that arose. However, Evžen Linhart, who passed away in 1949 at the very beginning of the construction, did not live to see the joyful result of our joint effort. I would like to thank, also on his behalf, primarily the then General Director of Stalin's factories, Comrade Eng. Svitavský, without whose great support and courage this construction would not have been realized, as well as ČSM, which fought with us at the beginning against the then reactionary circles that wanted to prevent the construction. I also thank our collaborator Mr. Eng. Dimitrijev for his selfless and proactive cooperation in the project work.