Architect's Apartment

I am an architect. I live with my wife and daughter on the 11th floor of a panel building in Prague 5. I wake up early in the morning, I haven’t smoked for years, I don’t argue, I listen to classical music while working, I drink coffee with a little milk, I like machines and mechanisms, and I enjoy knowing how they work. I appreciate politeness, naturalness, and honesty, including in building materials, their roughness, smoothness, and aging. I love my job. I am a perfectionist.

The reconstructed apartment is meant for our three-member family. We need a large living room, which is to be the heart of the apartment. It must fit a kitchen and a large table, a space for exercising, and perhaps even a children’s slide. That is why it occupies an entire section of the apartment defined by load-bearing panels. There is no space for any hallway or other spatial nonsense, of which there are already more than enough in the common areas of our panel building. We don’t have a television; we watch movies and cartoons on a projector. I enjoy growing plants, so the windows of the loggia, which has a view of the whole of Prague, are shaded in summer by climbing cucumbers. I carefully check their proper development every morning. Some tomatoes grow in their own pot, while others share a large self-watering pot with ivy. I like to carefully align the fresh shoots of our five-leafed vine, which grow from large pots at the other end of the loggia, on the cords on the walls and ceiling of the loggia, so they climb and grow nicely.

In addition to the living room, we need a room for our daughter. It is almost a mirror image of the guest room, which also serves as an office. They are connected by sliding doors so we can chase each other around the built-in wardrobe setup. Originally, there used to be a living room on the site of these rooms, without a loggia! You could only enter it from one privileged living room. That is now over. We have turned the entire layout around, and access to the loggia is from the living room.

In this second section of the apartment, besides the rooms and built-in wardrobes, there is a toilet, a nook with a washing machine, and a comfortable bathroom with a bathtub. We don’t need a fan in the bathroom anymore. It now has a window, through which we can reliably ventilate it in a few seconds. And most importantly, it now has natural light, which is a luxury in a panel building.

Our homeowners' association is strict. Among other things, it has prohibited any embedding of utilities into load-bearing walls or ceiling panels. We didn’t want to lower the ceilings with drywall ceilings, where it’s possible to hide some utilities. I consider height to be one of the most valuable aspects of space. And so we are probably the only ones in the building who truly respect that and don’t embed anything, not even the vertical electrical conduits. Everything runs on the surface, just like the original heating conduits. But I don’t mind. I appreciate meaningful restrictions that simplify my decision-making while simultaneously creating their own natural aesthetics. The masons, plumbers, and electricians weren’t quite so fond of this decision, as they had to hit the axes of everything exactly: rooms, openings, and tiles. All new conduits are directed in precise geometric networks. I also told them that the small 10x10 tiles cannot be cut down because I had planned it exactly to avoid the need for cutting. They were also sometimes surprised that I didn’t want them to smooth out and plaster over spots and irregularities in the plaster after removing the polystyrene cassette insulation from the ceilings. We proceeded the same way with the adjustments of the irregularities that remained on the ceilings after the demolition of all non-load-bearing partitions. The masons were only supposed to roughly clean them up, apply primer, and paint everything white. I actually don’t mind the irregularities in this case; I even like them. They are an honest decoration and, moreover, free. Of course, the masons were puzzled when I scolded them for millimeters of unevenness at new walls or along the joints of the new floor, which were supposed to be always the same at the walls. I somehow indicated to them that I care about the contrast of the original structure and the newly inserted elements, but I didn’t explain much because it probably wouldn’t align with their truth anyway. I didn’t explain to them that I don’t mind the traces of original construction interventions or removed walls. I also didn’t explain that it is almost the same as when restoring historical monuments, where, according to one philosophical trend, it is desirable that the traces of interventions from different periods of development should be noticeable. But I understand that using this method in a panel building is somewhat unusual. However, I believe it is legitimate; after all, the house is almost 50 years old.

Repairing panel apartments, however, does not have to be cheap. There is indeed a lot of carpentry work in the apartment. We have ash veneer even inside the cabinets because it was meant to be that way. Our bedroom is narrow, just the width of the bed, but one day it will be entirely lined, like a cabin, also with ash. But today, I enjoy the scraped plaster and the original panel with countless "imperfections" that I painted white. It was supposed to remain gray, but it’s painted white because I wasn’t paying attention and came a few minutes late. My daughter, who is almost three years old at the moment, has already started painting. We didn’t understand each other. So I painted that one concrete wall white so that it's all the same everywhere.