Detached house

This unusual house was built at the end of the 1930s for Josef Louda, professor of geography at Jičín Grammar School, and his wife, according to plans by Čeněk Musil. A two-storey, efficiently conceived structure with its entrance on the eastern façade, here is undoubtedly one of the purest functionalist realisations of the architect, especially when it came to designing private homes.

The house was built on the floor-plan of two back-to-back rectangular prisms, with the one further away from the street being a storey higher. The roof of the former thus served as a terrace. The south-facing frontage, behind which are the main living spaces – the dining room and living room, is dominated along the central axis of the house by a flagpole, unabashed drainage openings from the terrace, and into the corners are set two facing composite windows with distinctly projecting sills, divided solely by a corner pier. Light enters into the interiors of the rear section – the kitchen, hallway, and WC/bathroom on the ground floor, and the rooms with storerooms on the first floor, through three smallish windows above the terrace, one window per floor on the western façade, a glass brick strip on the eastern façade, and several small windows on the northern façade.

It is likely that no significant alterations have been done to the house, and currently the façade is starting to crumble (the black cladding around the windows is falling off). The garage beside the entrance gate onto the property is still preserved in the form in which it is recorded in the design documents. Also preserved are some of the functional (and distinctively functionalist) details: the above mentioned drainage pipes, the pool-like ladder leading from the terrace to the roof, and the sheet-metal awning above the terrace.

(GA)