Three apartment buildings on Vinařská Street

Jan Gillar: Residential Rental House

As for moral impulses, only a fraction of construction has a healthy and positive tendency to create good forms for life. Most of these houses are built to make a profit. We are inclined to build houses close to churches and higher architectural structures. What a mistake! In most houses, there is only calculation and disregard for the common good. It is terrifying that throughout all times, an uninterrupted union of entrepreneurship pulls along, which does not care at all about human life. How little goodwill is involved in such an important work for common life. (Prof. Pavel Janák, 1933)

In the past seven years, the issue of rental housing and urban living has become a subject of greater interest among experts, namely architects, municipal workers, and social institutions. To what extent and how correctly and successfully the issue of housing in the city is being discussed is still hard to say today, since all the different types of apartment buildings are not systematically registered, observed, and their condition, maintenance costs, adaptation costs, etc., are not recorded. I acknowledge that this research would be very difficult, as I know how it is possible to execute even the best architectural plan and the most perfect position craft-wise poorly and unprofessionally, just to have something built. We all know how nearly perfect the intervention of the Ministry of Public Works was in the housing issue by announcing a competition for exemplary floor plans, where really excellent floor plans were presented, and in the published material with tables of awarded proposals for apartment buildings with small apartments, we do not find even today a floor plan that could be criticized. It was a good work of both the jury and the designers at that time. But what did reality show? A large number of houses built in cooperative entrepreneurship and by private entrepreneurs have been poorly built (paintwork, fittings, sewerage, etc.) and something unexpected happened — the houses aged and deteriorated very quickly, and it became necessary to call craftsmen for repairs. That this deterioration in quality was a brake on cooperative entrepreneurship, I don’t even need to mention. Housing shortages, a lack of construction specialists, high prices of materials, post-war psychosis, and other accompanying phenomena like land speculation resulting from the devaluation of money due to the war were the causes of careless work, small, indeed subpar small apartments, which numerous families moved into. The rapid growth of cities after the war and the entire restructuring of state organization all showed signs of haste, and it was not possible to achieve a decrease in housing shortages, although it was hindered by tenant protection. Small apartments, small rooms were built, and now we see that these have fallen below common value, that they have aged. I purposefully pointed out the influences that, due to population density and other factors, affected the devaluation of houses, as it is a lesson for the future.
The laws establishing residential areas of 80 m2, 40 m2, and today according to the law on building houses for the poor, 34 m2 are really just areas that do not convey much. We only see a tendency for decreasing residential areas. However, it is necessary to realize for whom this area is intended and how it will be architecturally processed. We all know that the first laws regarding considerable residential space were actually intended for wealthy classes and that they did not remedy the housing crisis. We know that even apartments in cooperative houses, where it was necessary to pay a deposit in various forms of membership contributions, were significantly expensive and inaccessible to the poor. This was intended to be countered by reducing living space. However, this reduction, which significantly limited speculation, did not succeed in providing apartments for the poor. The time of economic crisis led to further deterioration, and thus it happened that foreign countries, such as Germany and Italy, began building peripheral settlements. These were apartments for the unemployed. Soon the shortsightedness of this, I would say, emigration policy became apparent, and it had to be abandoned. In this field, we can boast of truly better foresight in Czechoslovakia. There were attempts to resettle unemployed and underemployed people from cities to the countryside, better said to the periphery, but again, through intervention and demonstrative pointing out by modern architects, it was possible to draw attention to the unsuitability of this settlement policy. It was a similar intervention as in 1930 and 1931 when these architects organized an exhibition of proletarian housing in Prague, Brno, and Bratislava. For the first time then, they pointed out the unsustainable conditions in housing for the poor and working classes. It was very difficult to gather numerical evidence about the number of beds in families, about bathrooms, etc. At that time, architects themselves walked from neighborhood to neighborhood to individual houses and families and collected the most necessary data for their work. This way, a considerable part of Prague and Moravian Ostrava was processed. Later, prof. J. Kroha processed it similarly in the architectural seminar at the technical university in Brno and presented with his students a sociological fragment of housing at an exhibition in Brno in 1933. Also, engineer Šula and engineer Lisková dealt with the housing issue as demonstrated by the exhibition and articles addressing this topic, not only from a purely drawing (architectural) perspective but in all its breadth and essence in the magazine SIA in 1935. One of the most valuable works was the book by K. Teige "The Smallest Apartment," published in 1932; it is still very valuable today, as it is a necessary tool for all who deal with the housing issue not only from the perspective of architectural form but want to cover the housing issue in its fundamental development and its progress. Another valuable work is the article from 1933 "One Hundred Years of Rental Housing in Prague" by prof. P. Janák, who always dealt with housing at his school. Prof. Janák captured valuable material from the construction of residential buildings in Prague and aptly evaluated Prague's residential construction. I myself have tried to contribute to the solution of the housing question with various works and a project of a residential colony in Ruzyně in 1931, where the reduced living area was replaced by areas for children during the day: crèches, playrooms, etc. — daily area (This work was first reproduced in 1932 and was exhibited in response to the exhibition committee in Milan in 1936 at the VI. Trienale in Milan). This daily area, which later prof. J. Kroha called the social space, should in my opinion be provided for every building designated for housing for the poor.
Architects Havlíček, Honzík, Gillar, and Špalek participated in 1930 with their small apartment projects in the CIRPAC congresses (congresses for new housing), whose Czechoslovak group (Benš, Fiala, Gillar, Havlíček, Honzík, Kittrich, Müllerová, J. Špalek, Teige, and Walnfels) was one of the most active and provided a number of materials for further work in the field of new housing and the development of floor plans, which we will present in one of the upcoming issues of the magazine if it is possible for technical reasons. This is indeed older material, but I think it will be very instructive and perhaps even necessary.
Competitions for the construction of residential buildings in the Pankrác area with small apartments brought forth a number of good ideas, particularly in projects that were not honored with awards; however, we all know the dismal state at Zelená Liška in Pankrác, the first large-scale small apartment initiative in Prague. The condition in the part of houses built in Holešovice by the Prague municipality is much better. Discussing these issues is not the essence of this article, but I think that the whole misunderstanding arose from inaccurate assumptions and incomplete overall solutions.
In the near future, the Prague municipality will begin construction of small apartments for the poor. The preparation of the small apartment law, which was necessitated by demand, was carried out with great care, both regarding living area and employment, and perhaps for the first time with the contribution of architects from practice. The Housing Commission convened at the prompting of Mr. Minister of Social Welfare Ing. Nečas gathered a wealth of valuable material and carefully monitored the development of the small apartment issue. The valuable contributions were made by Brno architects, who today may have one of the best experiences since the city of Brno can boast truly planned construction. The first maximum limit for the size of an apartment for the new law was set at 24 m2. This apparently small area was increased at the prompting of Dr. Fierlinger from the Ministry of Public Works and prof. Kroha by a whole 10 m2, thus totaling 34 m2. However, I do not know whether this area will suffice, and whether these apartments are not awaiting the fate of post-war construction. I think it should be remembered, as I recommended in 1931, about the common daily area for children, by which the residential area is actually increased. This area may seem unnecessary at first glance, but let’s consider how much the old kitchen has transformed, where laundry was done, how with the establishment of a common laundry room, the kitchen decreased in area, etc. I would like to point out the direct dependence of collective facilities and technical equipment of the apartment on its surface area. There is no dispute over how residential space and amenities are interconnected. It is quite possible to solve an apartment with a usable area of 34 m2 on a total occupied area of 39 m2 and the same usable area on 45 m2. The amenities of the apartment are, in fact, an important guide for the usable area and the reason for the evaluation or potential devaluation of the apartment and the house. It would be necessary to graphically as well as realistically determine this minimum-maximum. I am convinced that with a reasonable increase in amenities and collective facilities, there would be a very substantial improvement in the housing standard without having to significantly increase the occupied area and costs.
The question of construction costs is still not uniformly resolved. The blame for this state should be sought elsewhere than among social workers and architectural designers. It is true that competitions should require clear and cheap construction, but what good is it when, with even the slightest revival of construction activity, the costs of building materials rise, and there is immediate cartelization of construction trades (and with that, the associated increase in prices, etc.). All of this hinders development and increases the costs of housing for the poor and housing in general. Today we can observe a very interesting phenomenon. Relatively more expensive building materials, especially some types of partitions, bricks, insulation boards, etc., which were sometimes financially inaccessible for normal construction, have today come closer to regular building prices, and it is thus possible to use economical and advantageous, albeit patented more expensive materials, successfully and enrich the floor plan by maximizing the utilization of patented advantages.
In the development of the floor plan of the residential building, as Mr. prof. Janák pointed out in his articles in 1933 and in the collected material from the Prague construction archive, the financial issue played a key role. This is generally understandable. A house of any purpose, not to mention a rental house, is always considered primarily from the perspective of profitability; at the very least, consideration is given to what the rent would be if the authorities, theater, etc., did not have their own buildings and paid rent. Only for this reason does realization and independent operation of authorities and other institutions occur. Thus, it cannot be grossly criticized that private builders always had the profitability of their houses in mind. The bank interest, although many (especially in previous years) found it uncertain, has always been significantly higher and thus more tempting for the deposit of monetary assets.
Those who had, could, and still have influence on shaping the apartment are its tenants, better said the demand for such or such apartments. This is evident even in the floor plans of older date. The demand for separate toilets forced builders to abandon shared ones and increase the acquisition costs of the building. Similarly, with rooms for maids and then with bathrooms, so that as late as 1889 separate bathrooms for large apartments began to appear in Prague, which had long been customary abroad. During the construction of Karlín, Vinohrady, and other districts, we see that it was not difficult for tenants to relocate to a greater distance from Prague (at an earlier significant distance) when the apartment was complemented by amenities and apartments were arranged in a more spacious layout than was common in inner Prague at that time. But simultaneously one can observe how housing demand and construction activity do not always positively impact the residential floor plan. We see how there was speculation with the demand for comfort. How many newer houses flaunt a pseudo-Renaissance standardized facade, but the conditions of hygiene, i.e., ventilation and lighting are neglected, so that, for example, maid rooms, although directly lit in the last century, later ended up with vaults of 6 m2, ventilation, and during the great growth of cities before the war, only into a staircase without light wells and ventilation. This method and flaw have mostly persisted to this day. True, the demand for light and ventilation is circumvented by describing the maid room in plans as a storage room, although everyone knows it is meant for a maid and is shown as such when renting. How many such storage rooms have been built in recent years? I know of houses where this practice continues today and where similar dispositions exist. I acknowledge that today’s exorbitant land prices force such measures, but once again it will be the tenants who will eliminate this. Much earlier and at a much better price, apartments can be rented where maid rooms are directly lit, where kitchens, bathrooms, and toilets are lined with ceramics, or there is an electric kitchen and today’s already essential central heating. It shows that it is not easy to rent out three-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments with poor amenities, that the prices of apartments in old houses have not risen as expected with the lifting of tenant protections. Today, these old houses must be adapted and supplemented with necessary bathrooms or rooms for maids; moreover, naturally with an elevator, and if the owner truly wants to value his house, then he must also set up central heating, which has indeed been accomplished in many cases. From this simple observation of development, it is evident that in housing culture, we are progressing, albeit not as much as we would wish. Relatively few houses are built for a higher standard of living.
In old residential floor plans, we can clearly observe the shape of the rooms, their development, depth, and the number of tracts. In all old houses, we see rooms of small depth and greater width, later square rooms. From the point of view of housing hygiene, small depth of the tract is almost a requirement, as well as two-axis rooms with two windows. One might think that this was already a requirement of hygiene then, but that is not true. At that time, it was a technical question; the greater the depth, the greater the difficulty with roofing. Similarly, small windows were not such a major issue for the then-used arch structure and thus were solved with two windows. This shallow solution of tracts can also be observed in palace buildings. In contrast, abroad — such as in the Netherlands, England, France, and some regions of Germany where it was customary to place ceiling beams onto end walls, i.e., neighboring walls, the tracts are of considerable depth. The same applies to the oldest houses with vaulted ceilings in our country, where the neighboring walls were used as supports for the arches, and therefore the depths of street tracts are significant. This is especially evident in freely standing family estates of old date.
Most of the houses today designated for demolition are houses of significant depth of occupancy, so depths of 18, 20, and 24 m are common, and the designer is compelled to connect to the neighbor while respecting the requirements of the builder, who wants to maximally utilize the occupied area permitted by the authority; moreover, there is also the need to prevent the devaluation of rooms which would be close to the neighbor's end wall. Thus, in practice, parcels of only 12 m width and 18-19 m of occupancy depth (18 next to neighbors and 1 m for stairwell protrusion or other) often appear. Thus, it is indeed necessary to utilize all the modern construction-technical achievements and technical devices to architecturally process significant depth.
I would also like to draw attention to the development of the overall shape, better said the composition of the apartment. Previously, the family house and the urban villa were influenced by apartment types of a tenement nature. The rental apartment was (and in many poor cases still is) a model for a larger independent family house. However, soon much greater care was given to villas, as they were not built for financial benefit, but for the comfort and interests of the builder who was following overall development in the world. Architectural specialists also dealt with family houses very thoroughly as it was possible to express architectural form and individual character much better. Every house had to be different, etc. The floor plan of the villa achieved valuable cultural forms, and today we see that this floor plan is becoming the floor plan of rental apartments. It will be very interesting to track this progress and mutual permeation once.
Balancing all technical, cultural, and financial demands is often a complicated question and in most plans submitted for approval, only one thing is considered, that is the yield and costs. It is true that floor plans conform to the building code, but how far is it from the regulation to a living form! The old building code is still in effect, but how life has changed, how technically and economically the structure of life has changed? Architects face a lot of work concerning quality so that today's heralded slogan of cultural housing becomes common among other non-specialist designers, of whom there are now a great number, supplying their buildings and projects to the construction market.