The book "99 Houses 3" is being released

The book 99 Houses 3 is an authorial selection of 99 best family houses built in the Czech Republic over the last six years. It was compiled by the team of architects Ján Stempel, Jan Jakub Tesař, and Petr Pištěk, who work at the Faculty of Architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague (FA) and are well-known and award-winning designers of family houses. For this third volume of the bestseller, they selected from over three hundred submitted projects.

The publication is the result of long-term research work by the Design Institute I at FA CTU in Prague. It is the eleventh title published by the team of experts from this institute. With this book, they built upon the previous two books – 99 Houses (from 2012) and 99 Houses 2 (from 2016), which quickly became bestsellers.

The book contains 99 diverse approaches and realizations of houses from nearly 70 architectural offices. It is not a straightforward cookbook or a collection of ideas, but rather a showcase of how to build differently. As one of the authors, Ján Stempel, says: "The book simply presents good houses from architects who know how to work with the atmosphere and feelings that a house should evoke."

Readers will find rich photographic documentation in the book, accompanied by comments explaining the architectural concept of each building. The photographs are complemented by floor plans, sections, and site plans in the same scale, allowing readers to compare size and spatial arrangements. The introductory text by Dalibor Borák explains the most commonly used terminology in the field of house naming from the perspective of their energy efficiency. Borák describes, in an understandable manner, for example, the differences between low-energy, passive energy, or energy-independent houses. Understanding these distinctions will help investors formulate requirements for a new house.

How does the third volume differ from the previous ones? "From the perspective of quality architecture, the houses in all three volumes represent the best that has been built in the Czech Republic," says another author, Jan Jakub Tesař. "The third volume, compared to the previous two, offers higher quality in detailed execution. It shows the evolution of technologies and materials used in construction. The houses from the first volume did not have access to today's capabilities. In terms of sustainability and energy efficiency, the houses are much further along," adds Jan Jakub Tesař.

The third volume also differs from its predecessors in that it contains exclusively new buildings. Renovations, remodels, and extensions have recently increased significantly, so the authors decided to dedicate a separate book to them.