City House Dobris, Czech Republic

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Family House, Turany, Brno, Czech Republic

City House Dobris, Czech Republic

Firm

SOIP architekti

Type

Cultural › Gallery Hall/Theater Cultural Center
Educational › Library

An architectural competition design of a City House Dobris, a cultural and social centre of a town in central Bohemia, not far from Prague, the Czech Republic.Library, multifunctional hall, coffee house, rooms for community activities, IT classroom.The designs main idea is to concentrate a few characteristic space forming elements at this place:City House as a mini city upside down- a situation when a house becomes an abstraction of its surrounding and metaphorically reflects urban structure.- a situation when the house takes a significant spatial principle of the place and transform it by turning it upside down while accepting a different functional form; in this case it is a form which bears the quality of openness, but at the same time preserves, to a certain degree, its inner authenticity.scheme 1: Classification of spatial principlesThe orthophotomap view reveals some overlapping principles of urban development:1/ historical structure naturally grown around the "spindle" of the Mirove square (orange colour)2/ permeable block residential housing, result of the five-year socialist planning development (red)3/ points of high-rise panel housing (blue)4/ grid of family housing organised along a basic street structure (green)scheme 2: turning semi closed yards upside downOur design suggests the motif of semi closed yard to become the main concept of the City House Dobris for representing a characteristic spatial forming element which is present in the all above mentioned principles of urban development in Dobris. The City House borrows this element of indistinct spatial dynamics, typical for yards, which means pointing to several directions. It also borrows the motif, present in structures, of opening at one side what inclines to closing itself entirely.Ambivalent hidingThis approach allows organise a house as an intimate sheltered space which defines itself against its enviroment but at the same time it sucks in the visitors at the selected south end and it can, on the other hand, function as an open, publicly accessible place.This ambivalent quality is, in our opinion, a significant feature of our design and we reinforce it by a few more interconnected approaches, as follows:scheme 3: layers of spatial activitiesThe aim of the design is to allow mutual synergy of two types of activities, the organised and disorganised.Although separated operationally, they will pervade in two layers within all space of the house.The layer of the organised activities situated mostly on the ground floor is represented by the activities designated to community associations, a library and a multi function hall that will be rented for various events.The layer of disorganised activities situated mostly upstairs on the terraces and living footbridges as well as in the yard where all sorts of free activities can take place, for example sitting and resting (terraces and footbridges), and games and sports (the yard).scheme 4: flexibility of the hallIn summertime, when weather is good, the whole hall can be open to the yard and thus its capacity enhanced. The hall itself then may serve as a stage and the yard becomes an outdoor auditorium. Alternatively, it can also serve as summer cinema with the pictures being projected on the library wall. In both cases the coffee shop may back up the events as refreshment point and the living footbridges may serve as spectator galleries.