Cooperation: NOMILAT
Team: Pavel Hladík + Studio Nomilat
Location: Prague 9, Czech Republic
Investor: private
Status: under construction
Motto
Everything we perceive as reality is a subjective image. Images shape our thinking. Thoughts form objects. Objects cast shadows.
Situation
The plot for the house being designed is located on the outskirts of Prague’s urban development. The horizon is bordered by the industrial view of the Malešice incineration plant, the panel buildings of Černý Most housing estate, and a strip of forest greenery leading toward Klánovice. The location can be seen as utilitarian in terms of ease of use. The project is neither a house embedded into a street frontage nor a solitary structure isolated from its surroundings. The plan is for a building that meets high architectural standards, within the limits of a rational budget, with a strong emphasis on a customized solution.
Solution
The concept of the facade responds to the rectangular layout of the house. The cubic disposition, conforming to local regulations, presents both a challenge and a limitation. Six identical squares, eight corners, and twelve edges forming a Platonic solid represent a universal architectural modular system – one that has been adored, developed, and cited thousands of times, and similarly exhausted and devalued (from the beginning of the modernist revolution to the present day). A square-shaped house can, in any case, be understood as one of the peaks of our rationalist society.
Principles
The facade’s principle is based on three concepts: (a)symmetry, rationalization, and shadow. For this project, the facade is not just a functional or aesthetic envelope for the house, but an attempt to integrate the chosen principles into the core of the building. Both the structure and the surface should merge into a single ideological whole.
Natural symmetry, referenced here primarily as the building’s identity principle, and only secondarily as a surface mimetic system.
The work with the principle of shadow operates in two ways. Externally, it acts as a soft shield from unwanted interactions with the surroundings, while internally, it functions as a dynamic intervention, changing with the intensity of outdoor light.
Umbra, penumbra, and antumbra – different levels of shadow serve as ideal metaphors for this approach.
Keywords
#symmetry; #asymmetry; #shadow; #duality; #unity; #deviation; #contrast; #shield