Klub Za starou Prahu awarded its own studio Ječmen in Olomouc

photo: Petr Šmídek

Prague – The Club for Old Prague today awarded Lukáš and Eva Blažková, who together form the architectural Studio Ječmen, for their own studio. They built it themselves in the suburb of Olomouc in Chválkovice. They utilized part of the gap between two houses and incorporated elements from older buildings from nearby and distant places. The club, which has honored the best new building in a historic environment for the fifteenth time, selected the blue-painted studio from eight nominated buildings.

The Blažeks placed the studio in part of the gap next to Lukáš Blažek's grandparents' house, leading to the courtyard. They preserved part of the gap to keep pathways, plants, and trees. "Out of the need to manifest our architectural sensitivity and from the necessity to materialize a decade of exhausting practice in Olomouc, I decided with my colleague - my wife - to start the construction of the studio by ourselves," Blažek stated regarding the project's intention. For the studio, he recycled large windows from the Masaryk Elementary School in Zábřeh from 1938, designed by the Hradec Králové architect Oldřich Liska. The glass walls are, alongside the blue color, a dominant feature of the building, striking yet not disruptive to its surroundings.

The authors, as they state, "romantically recycle" other used parts as well – the parquet flooring and heating elements are from barracks, the mirrored stainless steel sheets are from an earlier studio, the chairs are from grandmother's living room, and the lamps from scrap. The new metal staircase resembles a steamship, and the new furniture is made from raw particleboard. The ceiling remained concrete, and the color of night blue used on the facade is, according to the authors, "the embodiment of the house's invisibility".

According to the award organizers, all nominated buildings aimed to enhance rather than disrupt the environment of old towns and villages. The chairman of the Club for Old Prague Award, Rostislav Švácha, appreciated that "after several years of drought, which does not provide a favorable testimony about Prague's architecture," two works from the capital made it to the finals. These are the apartment building on Nuselská Street by the team of Petr Bouřil and the unique wooden structure of the Proluka cultural center on Francouzská Avenue designed by Jan Fabian.

In this year’s edition, the line of unusual yet contextual buildings includes the extension of the regional museum in Kolín by Irena Hrabincová, a community center in the village of Lisovice by the Flying Engineers, and a neo-functionalist school in Nezamyslice by the studio Malý Chmel. The collection of finalists is completed by an apartment building on Kopečná Street in Brno by the RAW studio and a multifunctional building in Valašské Meziříčí designed by Miroslav Pospíšil. According to the organizers, the group of these eight buildings features a great diversity of architectural approaches, all leading to a common goal: to enhance rather than disrupt the environment of our old towns and villages.