project:  2023 ​

completion: 2025

service: architectural design

temporality: decades

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The "Apartment for a Plastic Enthusiast" is a love story. It intertwines a generational relationship between people and space, a love for radical precision, and experimentation in the search for ideal architectural forms.

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Like every love story, this one has its introduction, plot twist, and catharsis. I was invited as a guide in the second act, when the new owner of a "panel housing" apartment inherited from his grandfather had already torn down part of the core and realized that he wanted to tear down more, but wasn’t sure how far or what the result would be. What he did know, however, was that he wanted to live in the apartment. We came up with the idea to open up the dark entry corridor as much as possible, so the original 3+1 apartment became a connected 2+kk with a brand new core.

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The concept of the modifications was clear from the start: to expose as much of the technology as possible, to hide nothing unnecessarily, to use utilitarian components, stainless steel, plastics, reuse Bakelite outlets, and so on. An obsession with hygiene and peculiarities to the point of oddities (which we both share with the client). The resulting architectural design reflects this vision without compromise.

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The third act – a year and three quarters after the architectural design’s completion, and following a few requests for photos and updates from the construction process, a plot twist emerged: life had evolved, and the client had reconsidered the plans for understandable reasons. He will not move into the apartment. However, he sent a few photos, and I was stunned. It’s not always the case that the essence doesn’t get lost in the architectural design-implementation journey, which is why many architects (including myself) sometimes obsessively draw all the details into the construction documentation (which I’m usually not fond of – sometimes the excessive effort to control goes against life itself). But what I experienced here was a consistent translation of ideas into matter: nothing was superfluous, nothing was out of place. On the contrary, a few elements, such as ceiling strips for the lights, appeared only after the architectural design was handed over, and they beautifully develop the work with the space.

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And finally, the swift fourth act, when, during a last-minute rush the day before the move-in with a cat and new tenants with an unknown aesthetic taste and furniture stock, Simona Horáková takes photos of the space after cleaning.

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As you read this text, the Apartment for a Plastic Enthusiast is already living its new life, and now we can all imagine what it might look like.

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Meow.

 

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Architectural design: Alžběta P. Brůhová

 

Architectural detail: Josef Ledvina

 

Photography: Simona Horáková​