Development project of a new building of 24 flats in Prague 5. The apartment building is built in a vacant lot, which was created by the demolition of the original buildings before the construction of the Strahov tunnel.
The gap was located on Švédská Street on the southern slope of the Strahov Hill. The ideal starting point was that it was in the place of the original urban development overlooking the city and the gardens of the villas.
Project brief
Design and of a residential house on a given plot of land, while meeting the prescribed territorial limits for this part of Prague. Ie. adherence to street and yard lines, cornice height and roof top. The stopping conditions were also related to the construction of the required number of parking spaces and the necessary common background of the house.
Design
The architectural study of the apartment building is based on the volume of the stopping conditions given by the City Council of the Prague City Hall, which determine the ground plan and view limits for the future house and the shape of the roof. Furthermore, the design respects the given environment, ie the character of the architecture of existing residential buildings in the street and generally this locality of Prague, where it is typical:
- “Separate” ground floor houses with high ceilings
- in the middle of the facade there is a buttress
- the division of facades is simple and has a uniform rhythm
- Loft covers the roof ledge
- scale of buildings is given by the width of individual plots … 10 – 15 m
- the last floor (attic) is slightly different
The proposed apartment building respects the architecture and rhythm of the connected facades and the scale of individual houses, the main division of the facade is divided into two equally large parts to preserve the original expression of the two houses that stood here. There are two entrances, one to the residential part of the protruding bay / tower and the other to the office space. Thanks to the height difference in the upper and lower part of the façade, the designers were able to locate the necessary entrance to the underground garage so that it does not disturb the ground floor and leads directly to the first underground floor. In the front garden area there will be a terrace above the parking spaces in the 1st floor. and is on street level. It will be grassed and planted with trees. The front garden fence will consist of a wall and columns made of quarry stone and locksmithed fence panels. The first attic, which recedes into the background, is distinctly separated by the cornice. All the windows of the house will be wooden, stained with a simple division of the so-called EURO window. The roof is sloping with studio windows, but due to the depth of the building, the upper part is flat with a roof terrace. The ground floor and the floor of the house are “connected” by windows and thus approach the high floors of the original and surrounding buildings. The entrance is highlighted by a risal body, which is terminated by a glass tower. The lower part will be covered with sandstone. Other parts of the facade will be plastered and colored. As opposed to this “tower”, there are 4 glazed areas on the 2nd and 3rd floor from the second half of the facade. The south facade, ie the garden, is determined primarily by spacious terraces on all floors and sloping roof over the 1st and 2nd attic, other architects did not use them. Plating is gray titanium zinc. The surrounding buildings have a “simplicity” that reflects the inferiority that was given to this side of the house at the time of the original construction.
Drawings
The tasks that the designers solved were mainly to design the following main structures and layout solutions for the house:
thorough solution of dispositions of all housing units.
reinforced concrete skeleton standing on piles
dilatation of elevator shafts due to acoustic transmissions to the bearing structure of the house
acoustic solution of the whole building. Impact sound insulation, partition walls, noise penetration from the adjacent street, etc.
Building
Interiors
In detail
The street windows are fitted with special glazing to eliminate traffic noise. Lift shaft. To prevent noise from entering the flats again, this time the elevator shaft is double-walled. The inner shell, which forms the load-bearing structure for the elevator, has its own foundation on the 2nd underground floor and is completely separated from the actual structure of the house. The problem was how to build these two concrete shells to keep them separated. Moreover, it was necessary to insert acoustic insulation into the gap between them. The designers’ solution was a separate assembly of both tires. First, a monolithic outer cladding was made together with the entire house structure, then the inner wall of the cladding was provided with acoustic insulation and finally the inner shaft was assembled from the panels.