Residential complex Na Vackově - Alfarezidence

The residential complex Na Vackově represents a realization based on long-term research into residential environments. The project, utilizing the low-rise/high-density principle, represents compact urban development with attractive shared spaces and aims to demonstrate a possible path for future cities as a viable alternative to persistent suburbanization trends.
The goal of the design was to create contemporary urban housing that reflects the fundamental qualities of the environment, such as human scale, appropriate hierarchy of privacy, and social control. Emphasis was placed primarily on the comprehensibility of the proposed environment, supported by a natural perception of subconscious orientation, which is a key prerequisite for an individual's ability to identify with such an environment and accept it as their home.
In the context of place and time, the design integrates diverse requirements that are currently placed on urban housing. On one hand, residents expect services and comfort corresponding to the density of traditional urban development; on the other hand, they seek peace, privacy, and the comfort of living in a private garden. From these diverse sources, the design draws individual motifs and, through their suitable combination, strives to create balanced, dignified, and affordable housing. It adopts the scale, comprehensibility of the environment, and hierarchy of public spaces from the traditional city while maintaining a density of over 300 inhabitants per hectare, allowing the emergence of an urban environment with sufficient concentration for the functioning of services and public transport; from the garden city, it adopts neighborhood relationships within the locality, privacy and intimacy of gardens, and combines the advantages of housing elements in apartment and family houses.
The essence of the design is a solution concept based on creating an image of the social relations of residents and a corresponding design of individual outdoor spaces that create varying degrees of intimacy for these spaces on a scale between "public" and "private," establishing their significance and meaning of use.
The size of the complex corresponds to that of an urban block. Its division, when determining the degree of its permeability, is based on the creation of three "nests" consisting of 3-4 houses (with 30-40 residential units), which by their character and spatial arrangement create the potential for so-called neighborhood housing. A higher degree of safety and social control of these "semi-private" spaces with the character of a garden, supplemented by various seating, relaxation, and play areas, are attributes of not only a pleasant and homely space of high standard but also a place that can serve as a link between comfortable living and the formation of higher-quality neighborhood relationships. The permeability of the land between individual "nests" is realized through "semi-public" paths, which are public access routes but are under the strict control of residents throughout their entire profile. Semi-public paths converge at a central square that serves as an informal center of the area, adjacent to which is a system of two children's playgrounds designated for various age groups. The proposed "urban block" is then delineated by clearly defined street spaces, connecting to the street network in the vicinity and thus seamlessly incorporating the new development into the overall structure of the locality. Each space in the entire complex thus has its purpose; no land between houses can be labeled as "no man's land."
The character of the environment is reflected not only in the design of the ground floor but also in the execution of individual houses. While the wooden facades of the inner semi-private courtyards of the nests follow a homely atmosphere and orient us toward the world inside, the representative brick facades with balconies express the fronts of the houses outwardly. Low to mid-rise buildings (a contemporary version of the traditional spatial division and atmosphere of our/European historical cities) emphasize the connection between humans and the land and place. The architectural expression of the houses and the division of windows supports this relationship. In the first three floors, large French windows with glass railings are designed to accentuate the contact with the ground. The upper floors exploit the potential of the view through strip windows with a sill.
Thanks to a detailed analysis of individual parameters of the residential environment and their subsequent appropriate use, combined with the application of contemporary building typologies and an emphasis on the complexity of solutions from various conceptual levels to architectural detail, it has been possible to implement unique housing in the Czech environment, where living means finding a home.

average number of stories: 3.57
KPP: 1.5 (1.1 when including street spaces)
total number of residential units: 124
number of units per hectare: 132 (105 when including street spaces)
estimated number of inhabitants per hectare: 380 (300 when including street spaces)

composition of apartments: 2KK: 32 (26%); 3KK: 49 (39%); 4KK: 43 (35%)