Villa Inner Landscape

Inner Landscape / Atrium Displuviatum / Natural as a Fish in Water / Residential Introversion

"I wanted to try an internal arrangement of a house where a person moves naturally or can just flow like a fish in water. A comfortable stay where you subconsciously sense everything. It's also about the natural flow of daylight, which enters not only through large windows but also through circular openings in the roof. When I came for the first visit to the finished villa, my eleven-year-old daughter unexpectedly stayed there for another three days. She simply liked it there." (Marek Štěpán – Naturalness)

The location of the villa has a favorable position just a bit from the historical center of the city. At the same time, it is close to large parks that positively influence the surrounding climate. A significant advantage of the place is the fragile network of social ties in the area, such as work accessibility, school attendance, family ties, and culture. The client's wish was to live a lot outdoors, which was not easy to meet on a small, urbanistically complex plot.

The two-story villa is set into a slightly sloping terrain and fully reflects it in its arrangement. It creates an internal living landscape that is directed inward, into a kind of residential introversion. At the same time, it allows views into the surrounding world, neighboring gardens, and the street. The villa has three height levels, which could rather be called platforms. At the street level, there is an entry concrete platform where the facilities are located. The main living platform with the social area is raised about half a floor above the street level, and the quiet area is another half meter higher. The social and quiet areas are wooden, perpendicular to each other, connecting to a grassy atrium, which is the core of the entire house. Adjacent to the atrium is a sauna building with a cooling pool that also serves as a separation from the street.

The main places in the villa are compositionally emphasized. For example, above the dining table, there is a large circular opening that highlights it with natural light. The fireplace, a symbol of home warmth, is located at the end of the entrance axis of the house. In the bedroom, there is a sizable romanticizing motif of Lysá Mountain.

The facades of the house are simple, abstract, expressing its material essence. Toward the street, the front garden is replaced by a long flower box.

"The Nový Jičín villa is a variation of the ancient atrium house. Specifically, Atrium Displuviatum, that is, a roofless atrium that Vitruvius describes in his Ten Books on Architecture. It is an atrium without columns and the roof water is directed away from it." (Marek Štěpán – Atrium)

Structural and Material Solution
Simply put, the bottom is concrete, the top is wood. The basement is designed as a white waterproof reinforced concrete basin of exposed concrete. The above-ground floors, including the sloped ones, are constructed as wooden structures made from massive cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. The external wall cladding consists of acacia wooden boards with a butt joint. The floors inside are of oak wood and concrete, and the outdoor terraces are made from acacia boards. The windows are black aluminum, glazed with insulating triple glazing.

The house is designed to low-energy standards. The indoor climate is supported by forced ventilation with heat recovery. Heating is underfloor hot water in combination with wall units, heated by a gas condensing boiler. Domestic hot water (DHW) is heated by a solar panel located on the roof. Due to the height of the groundwater, an air chamber is created around the basement, and under the atrium is a rainwater tank for irrigation.