U-shaped apartment complex with commercial premises. It is a modern housing where metal elements, timeless solutions of terraces and exteriors are used. On the ground floor there are commercial spaces, garage spaces and plenty of parking spaces near the house.
The Lesná housing estate in Brno was created at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. The architects who designed it drew inspiration in far-flung Finland. At that time, a rather unique housing estate was created in our conditions.
Among the prefabricated houses, objects for civic amenities were planted in the greenery. However, with the change of time, these lost their functionality and began to remain empty, unused. Shops and other services moved elsewhere. Thus, the idea arose to use the existing building, to preserve the space for business in it and to supplement it with housing.
In contrast to the surrounding extensions on prefabricated apartment buildings and attached balconies in a style often referred to among the people as “entrepreneurial baroque”, the architect chose austere, clean architecture for the new building. Thanks to this, the house sensitively fits into the existing greenery. The project partially used existing load-bearing structures and was supplemented by a three-storey superstructure and a six-storey extension.
The architectural concept of the design is based on the division of the object into a southern and a northern tract. These are connected to each other by an open communication gallery that runs vertically across all proposed floors. The northern tract is further divided by the omission of one six-metre module into two parts. This solution greatly accentuates the staircase that passes through this space. On the eastern facade, a solitary object of vertical character is connected to the gallery — “turret“, which forms a distinct dominant from the main arrival side. There is also a main staircase with an elevator connecting all floors.
On the roof of the building are located in a regular grid of superstructures with terraces, belonging to the apartments on the fourth floor. These superstructures, with their rhythm and different material expression, soften the relatively austere character of the whole object.
When designing the mass of the house and the layout of the individual floors, consideration had to be given to sufficient sunshine and lighting of the area of the apartments.
49 apartments and 18 units for integrated housing function were created in the Lučina Polyfunctional House. In addition, there is room for two commercial units on the first above-ground floor of the northern tract. In the underground of the northern tract there is a mass garage with 36 stalls, in the underground of the outbuilding there are three individual garages, and additional parking spaces are made from the north and east sides of the house. In the two floors of the southern wing, using the space of the original building, there are units for integrated housing function, which also allow for barrier-free living.
A total of 49 apartments with a size of 42.7 m² to 164.6 m² of floor area are built in the extension from the 2nd floor to the 4th floor of the northern and southern sections and the entire area of the newly added tower — 6th floor area. Of this number, 17 apartments are made as maisonettes, using the space of the extensions of the 4th floor of the northern and southern tracts.
Access to the apartments is from the galleries, which are situated in the atrium between the north and south tracts, connected by two staircases. Thus, an apartment building was created, which is unusual in our conditions. Thanks to the gallery with pavilions, from where there are entrances to individual apartments, their inhabitants will definitely meet each other. In addition, through the large windows of their kitchens, which are also directed inside the “atrium”, they see - as they say - up to the plate. Anonymity, like in a classic apartment building, where people get out of the elevator and disappear from the dark corridor behind the door, has taken its toll.
Processing of complete project documentation, engineering activities and author supervision.
