Within the South Bohemian village of Kamenná Lhota, Home Oskar is Prague-based architect Jan Žaloudek‘s own residence—a retreat for himself and his spouse, artwork historian and author Jolanta Trojak—inside the former gardens and Baroque barn of a neighboring château.
The home, named after composer Oskar Nedbal, takes inspiration from each the agricultural vernacular and idea of a chapel, tempered by the constraints of constructing on a culturally-protected website. Its elongated type and gabled roof recall conventional agricultural buildings, whereas its defining characteristic—a perforated southern gable wall—filters like a display screen, animating the inside with shifting patterns of shadow and solar. Niches on every façade type loggias and entryways that permit the home itself to breathe: it may well open totally to the orchard and fields or shut for a retreat.
Inside, the palette is spare: white stucco partitions, concrete flooring, customized ash furnishings, granite, and Czech larch. Sculptural parts, niches, and arches are a nod to ecclesiastical structure. Moreover, Žaloudek and Trojak have envisioned the house as a Gesamtkunstwerk, open to the general public, whether or not by way of leases or as a venue for artist residencies, occasions, and workshops. Greater than a personal residence, Home Oskar is a research in how artwork, structure, and panorama convene to type a unified entire.
Photographed by Boys Place Good for Jan Žaloudek.
