Pavel Míček Architects designed a non-traditionally traditional cottage in idyllic mountain landscape of Czech Beskydy. Concrete and larch wood express the context and serve as pivotal conceptual guideline of a weekend house around which the undisrupted surrounding landscape continues to flow almost unnoticed.
Project description by the architects:
A non-traditionally traditional cottage in idyllic mountain landscape. An extraordinary place in the southern part of the Moravian-Silesian Beskydy. Mountain landscape with almost no other buildings nearby – with the exception of just few scattered homesteads. The plot borders on the road from the upper part and is formed by a wild mountain meadow sloping down to a wooded shadowy gully with a flowing brook.
image © BoysPlayNice
Centre of the design was searched in the primordial mountain atmosphere. The process was none too easy, being significantly influenced by the Beskydy Protected Landscape Area Administration and its rigid building regulations, which much complicate the creative or innovative approach.
image © BoysPlayNice
The first ideas were not related to space and volume. They aimed to the material which could express the context and serve as a pivotal conceptual guideline. Concrete and larch wood. How can characteristic features of these materials, contrasting to a large degree, be used in the best way and with minimal means?
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
Heaviness and lightness. Concrete embodies the heavy hollow platform, partially burrowed into the earth surface, with almost cave atmosphere. It hides larch bedroom cabins and service house spaces.
image © BoysPlayNice
Two light larch boards, holding the free-flowing space with open views into mountain scenery, were then supported against each other on this piece of rock.
image © BoysPlayNice
The undisrupted surrounding landscape around the house continues to flow almost unnoticed. The concrete shall turn grey and overgrow with moss, the larch wood shall gain greyish-silver patina, and the access path from sandstone stones shall be barely seen in the meadow grass.
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
image © BoysPlayNice
Ground Floor Plan
First Floor Plan
Site plan
Section
Elevations
Project name: Weekend House in Beskydy
Architecture firm: Pavel Míček Architects
Author: Pavel Míček
Location: Beskydy Mountains, Czech Republic
Project year: 2011 - 2013
Completion year: 2014 - 2019
Built-up area: 154 m²
Usable floor area: 185 m²
Volume: 937 m²
Photographer: BoysPlayNice
Structural Engineering: Vladimír Uchytil
Mechanical Engineering: Oto Nový
Building Physics: Milan Farář
Electrical Engineering: Jaroslav Tesař