VII. Bohuslav Fuchs Award - winning projects

House for a Lifetime
Tereza Dvořáková (3rd year)
supervisor: Ing.arch. Jan Mléčka, Ph.D.



This work is essentially all about me. I had to come to terms with my lived life and clarify my ideas about my future life. Now I have a goal. I have been exploring what home is and what conditions create such a feeling. In this regard, the project House for a Lifetime has enormous value for me. It helped me deal with many things, sometimes even dismantling childhood ideas, but it opened up new dreams. I dedicated the whole work to myself; every time I open the manuscript, I let my own voice speak. I have boundless faith in my work.

I slept in a cave and alone on a hill. I gained experience from closed and completely open spaces. I created a house that is a place of safety and freedom for me - us. A house for a lifetime for the entire life of a family. For me, my husband, and our children. This house has a floor 20 meters above the ground, above the treetops. The second name of the project is Minimum, and thus this house is conceived with it in mind; two bedrooms, our common space, and essential facilities. On the roof, there is a greenhouse where we are able to produce our own food.

The house - a steel structure that is anchored and suspended on a concrete tower over 30 meters high. The tower serves as the communication core, with stairs and an elevator. The tower has openings so that additional structures can be added for possible expansion of the house.

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Community Center Lesná
Res Publica IV.
Bc. Jan Havlíček (5th year)
supervisor: Ing.arch. Vítězslav Nový

Following the previous semester and its urban reflection on Halasovo Square (Brno-Sever), this work processes the potential of a public building in this locality - a community center. The design operates at the end of the square's axis (or today, a desolate parking lot) and significantly lines up with the morphology of the terrain, connecting with the principles of the Lesná housing project. The phased design focuses on a shared gathering space for co-working or quiet sitting. It connects with club rooms, spatially formative common open space, and a large hall that can be opened for summer events.

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Winery Dolní Kounice

Five Senses in Architecture
Bc. Radek Pasterný (5th year)
supervisor: prof. Ing.arch. Ivan Koleček

"To design means to gather information about a given place; as Leonardo da Vinci himself said, 'it is a mental process.' For example, when we find two stones - one next to the other in a certain place, it doesn’t mean that we should build a stone building, but rather that we must simply understand what the true energy of that place is."

There are perhaps countless landscapes. From those that have been so transformed by humans that they resemble a lunar landscape, to wild natural sceneries still untouched by humans. Although some people love certain landscapes more, and some less, each has its extraordinary charm, each has its own genius loci.
Of course, there are not only landscapes where nature is wild and unaffected by human activity, nor just landscapes that have been devastated by humankind. There are also places where a harmony exists between our activities and nature. I might even dare to say that there are places where with human contribution and nature's consent, a specific landscape arises which mother nature would not create by herself, I mean a cultural landscape.
In my opinion, a landscape does not become cultural simply because the hand of humans dominates it. It becomes cultural when people work the land, living in harmony with the given landscape, and are aware that what nature gives them, they must return and take care of. These are mostly people who have worked that land for several generations, their family lives being firmly tied to that place. It is these people who understand that the landscape is not just for them but must be protected and cared for, so it remains for their sons, daughters, grandsons, great-grandsons, and future generations. They have strong ties to the place, providing added value to their surroundings. And it doesn't matter if they are rich or poor. They know well that only through care and living in harmony with the place can they keep the landscape thriving and full of energy.
Winemakers know very well how important it is to care for their landscape. They also create magical patterns and sceneries from grapevines. The vineyards then please not only our eyes but also enchant our taste and smell senses once processed.
As an architect, when I enter this landscape, I must realize the harmony in which people can live with the landscape, which bears the marks of their efforts and work passed down from generation to generation. As Moura states, I must find the true energy of that place and not disturb that energy.
       
In vino veritas
In wine, there is truth ...
From wine, one sings, from beer, one becomes fat, from spirits, one becomes foolish ...
Who wants to drink must dig ...
The cellar makes the wine ...
Wine and women make fools of many men …
In wine, there is truth, easily said, but where do you want to seek it? Seek it at the bottom! 
The vineyard needs no prayers but hoes ...
Who loves not women, wine, song, remains a fool forever ...
A vineyard yields well when the farmer often visits it …

Countless quotes, proverbs, and sayings exist about this drink, not to mention the number of folk songs. It is evident from them that this drink can bring not only joy but also concern. Concern especially over the care of the raw material from which it is made, namely the grapes growing in the vineyard.
We could discuss the beauty of this drink indefinitely, but I need to focus on the beauty of winemaking, not only the beauty that pleases the eye but also the beauty of the atmosphere, the beauty of taste, and many other beauties that I can find in winemaking.

What does the term winemaking actually mean to me? Are they buildings, cellars? Hectares of vineyards? People working with wine? Or is it all of the above?
The term "winemaking" mostly signified "a wine factory" to me, something large and hard to grasp, something without a closer relationship to wine. I liked and mostly visited small winemakers and their cellars. The reason was that they felt closer to wine. I could see in their faces the days spent in the vineyard, the love dedicated to wine and the joy that the outcome brings them.
Today, I find family wineries where love for wine passed down through generations intertwines with the expertise and quality of large wineries. Perhaps this is why today so many wines from these wineries are sought after.
But how to design a winery of this type? For me, it is quite clear that it must not lose the charm of the small winemaker—the charm of being able to peek into production, of being part of the process. The heart of such a winery has always been the cellar for me. But not the one where you sit and drink, but the one where the wine matures, where the winemaker draws directly from barrels with a taster and tells about the wine regions, about what each year was like and what each period brought to the wines or deprived them of. It also often happens that the winemaker appreciates your interest in their wine, and then you might nosedive into the secret stock archives.
This is one side of winemaking, but nowadays, a winemaker also needs to earn a living. Therefore, they must also sell and present the wine well, for which winemaking is also intended.
Thus, winemaking must combine modesty and love for wine with ambitions and a modern interpretation of winemaking. It will be very difficult to find a consensus for both approaches and to combine these contradictions.
The place itself stands for me on the edge of contradictions, similar to the content of the expected winery. This time on the brink of regions, where on one side ends the "Vysočina" with its undulating terrain, on the other begins the lowland area of Southern Moravia, full of vineyards dominated by the "Pálava Hills." The whole scenery is accentuated by the meander of the Jihlava River, which flows through a large part of Vysočina and at this point flows into the "Southern Moravian Sea." Therefore, views of both landscapes are also very important to me. It is as if on this edge, I sense that a morphological break occurs between the Hercynian and Alpine orogeny.
I feel that the winery will be on the "edge" - on the edge of regions and landscapes – on the edge of the old and the new ...