Project: Private Villas, The Oaks, Prague
JPA were selected as one of seven British architects to work on The Oaks, a â‚Ź400 million, 220-home development on the outskirts of Prague in the Czech Republic. Our concept for the first of a range of villas, is based on a stone wall that defends the site on the public edges, with a simple linear house nestling against the wall, set beneath a red copper roof. The enclosing wall is highly articulated and breaks to form an inviting entrance courtyard, flanked by a second, smaller garage building, which also contains a guest suite.
The entrance lobby, with coat storage and guest wc, opens into a circulation route offering a dramatic view along the length of the house and beyond to the nearby wooded area. A double height staircase hall has a study to one side and utility spaces the other serving an open plan kitchen, which in turn opens onto a dining space which is also double height. A few steps drop down into a large living space beyond a stone fireplace. Stone tiled floors (under floor heated) and slatted timber ceilings to provide a robust, yet warm interior.
third incorporates a dressing room and en-suite bathroom. To the south–west end of the house, a master bedroom suite enjoys distant views westwards.
The house is oriented roughly east–west and so all the open plan spaces enjoy views southwards across the golf course and hills beyond. Externally a delicate awning structure provides solar shading to the south facing rooms, and this expands outside the dining space into a covered al-fresco dining area complete with barbecue.
Externally, we complement the simple forms of the house with a restrained material palette of rubble walls, off-white render (with two panels in an ochre colour in a reference to local farmsteads), timber and red, copper roofs that echo the prevalent orange red tiled roofs of the Czech vernacular.
At first floor, two bedrooms share a family bathroom, while a
The garage building has space for two cars and bicycles and a glazed link, with a slatted timber veil, connects to a large guest suite, that in turn links to a snug in the roofspace. A basement provides storage, wine store and plant spaces.
The house has a total net internal area of 621M2.
PROJECT DETAILS Client: Status: Contract value:
Arendon Development Company a.s. In planning -
Executive Architects: Masterplan + Landscape: Sustainability consultant:
Cigler Marani, Prague EDSA, Florida Doug King Consulting