Apartment building of Alžběta and Antonín Kurel
1927–1928

In 1928, the Pilsen builder Antonín Kurel completed his own apartment house in Bendova Street in the suburb Říšské Předměstí. The plans for the Kurels’ house were most likely drafted by the architect Vladimír Weingärtner, who worked in 1921–1943 at the local industrial school. The three-storey building with a traditional pitched roof was erected on a relatively narrow vacant site between two houses. In the basement were cellars and, in its courtyard section, a laundry and modest caretaker’s flat. The architect designed for the ground floor and each of the upper floors a one-room and a two-room flat, each with a kitchen, pantry, bathroom, toilet and hallway leading to an open gallery between the shallow courtyard wings of the building. The loft space also held one similarly laid-out one-room flat.

Antonín and Alžběta Kurel’s house represents in this location one of the few First Republic examples of Modern architecture, since almost the whole of Bendova Street was given its character by buildings erected mostly around 1900 in various variations on conservative Historicist styles. The neighbouring house (No. 17) built in 1924 by Kurel’s frequent collaborator, the builder Tomáš Dobrý, is still, despite the relatively austerely ornamented facade, distinguished by the use of Neo-Classical elements – high fluted pilasters, a notched entablature and a tympanum. On the Kurels’ house we clearly see, on the contrary, a tendency towards Kotera-style geometrical Modernism, which appeared in the 1920s in Weingärtner's work also. This can be seen, for example, in a group of six family houses in Čermákova Street (C4–1763). The architect conceived the main facade as a harmonious, axially symmetrical composition of horizontals and verticals that exploited the contrast between pointed brickwork and rendered surfaces. In addition to these materials, the parterre had a socle of rough-hewn stone. Weingärtner accentuated the central part with the house entrance by means of a shallow portico, behind which was a double staircase. He divided the facade of the building with rectangular three-light windows and a prominent cornice with an indication of an attic gable.

The building recently underwent relatively sensitive complete restoration that revitalised its appearance at the end of the 1920s.

AK
 

Investor

Literature

Sources