Karpuchina Gallery

Designing a modern art gallery with young artists in the center of Prague is probably every architect's dream. Creating open and clean spaces for expressive art. Not having ambitions, suppressing ego, just creating a backdrop for the paintings. Clean walls and original flooring covered with a layer of resin reflecting light or artwork.
At the opening of the gallery, our professor from the faculty came and said: “It’s crooked and it slips.”
This could describe the entire project; its beauty lies in the fact that it is a reconstruction and the gallery spaces must adapt to the building. The only new walls are exhibition partitions in the lower floor.
The initiator of the reconstruction was the gallery owner Alexandra Karpuchina. At the turn of 2018, she decided to change the space for her gallery and relocate to Prague 1. She gave us free rein; the only limits were budget and time. Thus, we could afford exposed plaster, acknowledged original floors, and focus even more on the space.
From the perspective of space, there was one fundamental task: to get a painting sized 2x2 m into the storage in the basement. Most of the budget was concentrated on this task.
New doors, as the only new intervention in the facade, are not only a visual element but the first "opening" that the painting must overcome.
In the interior, we enlarge the passage to the staircase so that the painting can “twist” and approach the next challenge – the staircase. It is narrow, double-bent with lots of protruding ceilings. Therefore, the basement leads to another “opening,” which is also the only significant intervention in the structures; it not only serves to move the paintings but also brings light from the upper floor to the exhibition basement.
The painting is down. It made it. The last obstacle is the low door leading to the storage. For this reason, we propose a narrow groove in the floor covered with a resin mat. The painting is in its place. It got through and is now just waiting for its new owner.