Rental apartment building | Prostějov

The now non-traditional typology of a rental house in the center of Prostějov became a very interesting task for us. The owner of the land, who also purchased the adjacent historic corner office building, commissioned us to complete the street frontage in a historically stylized form that would connect the entire area. His wish was to build an easy-to-maintain and durable rental house from which he would provide for his descendants and build his legacy in Prostějov. We took on the task with great pleasure and prepared this study, in which we had the opportunity to focus on historicizing elements, materiality and facade details. It was also an opportunity to deal with the modularity of residential hygiene cores and the timeless maintenance of rental apartments.

The object materially matches the height of the neighboring house without using the maximum possible height according to the regulation of the area. For the investor, sustainability and the connection of the street front were essential, so the building, despite the regulations, is only four-storey with the last floor jumped up and a terrace. The volume of the building makes maximum use of the given plot of land and, as part of the addition to the existing urban plan of block buildings, it uses the entire area of ​​the plot, except for the handling area for scaffolding. An important regulation was the provision of parking spaces on one’s own property. Half of the building’s ground floor is thus dedicated to the stacker’s parking space. The first above-ground floor is raised by half a floor, thanks to which even the apartments on this floor enjoy relative privacy. The terrace on the top floor is then located next to the largest apartments and can thus serve, for example, directly to the owners of the rental house. An important material element of the relatively long modular facade are two symmetrical bay windows and a balcony above the central entrance. These create interesting spaces for apartments with a view to the sides of the street, as well as a shelter for the entrance portal.

The floor plan is very simple thanks to the long linear corridor on the intra-block side of the building. This corridor is flanked by a linear communication core with a dilated elevator, thus creating an important place for the apartments on the facade. On the first above-ground floor, the space is shared by two smaller flats with layouts of 1+KK and 2+KK, with the elevated space of the stacker’s stall. On the second to third floors, the layout is repeated with three 2+KK apartments, two of which are mirror-identical, and two 1+KK units located mirror-identically around the communication core. In total, there are 15 apartments in the building, most of which are identical or mirrored, which results in simpler maintenance and cyclical furnishing with identical sanitary ware and furniture. On the fourth, last above-ground floor, there are two larger 3+KK layouts and one 1+KK unit using the continuous terrace of the house.

 The facade stylistically follows on from the original building and takes as a model the rhythmic grid of the grooved structure of the facade. Imaginary columns rise from a practical and substantial plinth made of travertine cladding. The flutes are executed in a simplified triangular geometry and, with the help of rough thrown plaster, separate the vertical bands of Chicago windows in a bronze shade. Their verticality is emphasized by the travertine cladding, which is thus repeated on the facade in a double meaning. The entrance portal, covered by a central balcony, is made in contrasting black Oscuro granite. The bounced floor is, in the principle of softening the termination towards the sky, simplified and the grooves are denser. Travertine is also replaced with sheet metal in a bronze shade identical to the window frames and all the details.