Project: Villa Řitka
Architects: Studio Pha
Location: Řitka, Czech Republic
Area: 5,274 sq ft
Photographs by: Filip Šlapal
Villa Řitka by Studio Pha
Czech Studio Pha has designed Villa Řitka in the town of Řitka in the Czech Republic. It is a 5,274 square foot home that spans across two floors.
It is immediately noticeable that exposed stone was used in order to accent the exterior walls of the home, but it is also visible on the inside of the home.
The overall layout of the home follows a U-shape with a small indoor pool in the middle.
The basic idea is a kind of enclosure of the building in and on itself, and the use of the sloping ground to divide the building into a two-storey main residential part on the upper part of the land and a lower building containing the garages and entrance hall further down the slope.
The result is essentially a two-storey house with a flat roof, positioned atop the concrete “retaining wall” of the lower structure.
The house’s plan is of “U”-shape, or equally it could be described as a rectangle with an interior atrium open on one side to the surrounding landscape.
Inside the atrium is a small pool, which ensures for this space pleasant cooling, reinforced by the system of louvered blinds against the sun.
The flat roof is weighted down with tiles, forming a kind of terrace landscaping retaining surfaces of flower-boxes filled with vegetation. As a result, the structure appears – even seen from above on the access road – as an organic compact whole of pleasing appearance. In this way, the roof becomes itself a fifth facade.
