Tag Czech

The Cake House is an innovative and modular home concept that was presented at the Designblok festival in Prague this year. The project was founded by Matyáš Švejdík, Pavel Špringl, and Šimon Marek, and described as an “architectural recipe for modular wooden houses”. The Cake House is intended to be a pitched-roof house that can be adapted and customized to the various needs of different people. It was presented at Designblok with the help of an interactive model display allowing visitors to play around with it, creating diverse home layouts.

Designer: Matyáš Švejdík, Pavel Špringl, and Šimon Marek

“The main idea of Cake Houses stands on the belief that if you come up with good basic space and construction principles, you can then plot variable and individual designs fast and reliably because of the standardization,” said Švejdík. The overall shape of the house is maintained at all times, although, the length is personalized according to the customer’s needs. The Cake House utilizes an online configurator to try out hundreds of different layouts and internal and external finishes. The design is then converted into a wooden construction built using prefabricated parts.

Currently, one Cake House has been built. It features a pitched roof and timber cladding which is seen in the Cake House design, this helps ensure that the home is affordable and economical. Although certain design factors have been implemented such as avoiding long dark corridors and adding large windows that connect the interiors of the home to the garden.

“The mainstream look and overall design quality of family houses in the Czech Republic is mostly poor – the reason being the fact that these houses are catalog projects usually without identity and deeper creative thought,” Švejdík said. “But for most people, this way of building their home is easier, cheaper, and more certain than working with an architect on multiple levels,” he added. “We decided to design a project that brings the advantages of good architecture and standardization together.” “We then came up with the basic principles of the construction and used our programming knowledge to create a system of assembling parts, and now we are able to create various configurations suitable for different people, families, or budgets.”

Located on the edge of the Česky Kras nature reserve southwest of Prague is a traditional Czech dwelling with modern interiors. Dubbed the Casa de mi Luna, and designed by architecture practice Studio Circle Growth, the home harmoniously merges with the local vernacular, owing to its classic gable roof and rounded eaves. The interiors of the home are quite modern and lined with pine. It eliminates the traditional compartmentalization found in rural homes and instead opts for open and spacious living areas that feel bright and welcoming.

Designer: Studio Circle Growth 

“When we got the paper with morphological regulations for the area, I thought gee, what a drag, a symmetrical gable roof with a prescribed pitch between 35 to 45 degrees, prescribed length-to-width ratios, prescribed colors, and so on,” said Studio Circle Growth’s founder Martin Zizka.”But then we kind of completely embraced them, especially when we saw the finished symmetrical red gable roof protruding in the landscape amongst the other similar houses, it began to feel right,” he continued.

And truly the interiors of the home are contemporary and chique. They are defined by lightness, openness, and organic organization. The minimal casa is built from prefabricated straw and timber panels that can be easily assembled on-site. The studio tried to utilize as many local materials as possible, and for the exterior used a base of larch planks and lime render above. On the other hand, the roof features traditional tiles called bobrovka.

The inside of the home features an expansive open-plan living, kitchen, and dining area. It is quite cozy with a staircase and a glazed tile-clad fireplace is also included. “The entire central bay of the house is open, allowing the place where it is connected vertically to breathe and bathe in light,” said Zizka. “The staircase thus becomes a central feature which not only connects the two levels but separates the ground floor into distinct yet open and interconnected functional zones,” he concluded. The ground floor also houses internal walls that are finished in white stucco, while the upper level is lined with pine-plywood sheets, that also subtly cover the arched apex of the roof.