Family house with studio

Building a house in a gap was our dream. After three years of searching and viewing many hopeless plots in both the close and distant surroundings of Benešov, we stumbled upon a "FOR SALE" sign behind the window of a row house in one of the few locations in Benešov with original buildings near the city center, which had been completely devastated urbanistically during communism.

5 minutes' walk from the square, a small garden that visually merges with the surrounding area into a large orchard, an original single-story house in a state ready for demolition, partially basement with a stone cellar featuring a brick vault. We couldn't have wished for more.

The concept of the house was born the very day we first viewed the plot, and it essentially hasn't changed since. The living area is situated on top of the studio (a guest room), garage, and service areas of the house, featuring a semi-buried and elevated living room, kitchen, and dining room connected to the garden, and above that, the relaxation area - a bathroom and two bedrooms facing the gardens. The street frontage of the existing houses has only one thing in common, and that is that each is entirely different. For this reason, we decided to break through part of the mass of the façade in favor of the entrance courtyard. This provides a calming entry to the house, pleasant views from the studio, and in the upper floor, a setback of the living area from the street with natural shading from the southern sun by the tree crown. A metal gate separates the courtyard from the street. The individual parts of the house intentionally connect in height to the surrounding cornices and ridges, creating order in contrast to the mass that has been broken on the street.

Structurally, the house was designed as a masonry construction using Durisol blocks with reinforced concrete ceilings. However, we also wanted to utilize bricks from the original house, which was successful for the gable supporting walls that do not need to be thermally insulating. In the end, this was sufficient for the ground floor; the remaining bricks are new. From the beginning, we also knew that if bricks, then unplastered, revealing the infinite structure and all imperfections.

The house has water heating and heating from a gas boiler. It is located on the middle floor in the utility room between the gable by the neighbor and the joinery-crafted kitchen wall. This minimized the water and heating distributions as much as possible. Additionally, it was possible to concentrate the pantry, technical facilities, and washing machine with dryer into one space, saving "precious" floor area.

Interior surfaces - floors made of poured terrazzo or covered with wall-to-wall cotton carpets, walls plastered or made of bare brick masonry, stairs and furniture made of larch. The windows on the ground floor (studio) are made of anodized aluminum, while in the living area, they are larch. Exterior surfaces - light two-layer plaster, black-painted concrete bricks or raw solid burnt bricks on the ground floor, a black metal entrance gate, concrete and granite steps to the garden, and paving of courtyards made of granite offcuts in combination with worked massive granite elements.

An integral part is the green design with a dominant entrance courtyard, a three-thorned hawthorn, large blue hydrangeas in the back courtyard, and the garden behind the house, divided by hedges made of boxwoods and grass into three consecutive parts - "ornamental" with lavenders, bay laurels, and many perennials complemented by herbs for food preparation, a leisure area with a fire pit and serviceberry, and a productive area with strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, an apple tree, and cherries.