Apartment building of Anna Kohoutová
1932

This terraced apartment house with a flat roof is a unique interwar building on the western end of Bendova Street. Anna Kohoutová had it built in the year 1932, probably as an investment. The construction was carried out by the Pilsen builder František Kvasnička, the owner of the nearby central garages on Neruda Street (C2–2009) where his design office was housed as well. In previous years, Kvasnička’s company had realised, among others, adaptations of apartments designed by Adolf Loos and his colleagues – the Vogels’ apartment at 12 Klatovská Avenue (C2–455) and the nearby apartment of the Kraus family at 10 Bendova Street (C2–1107). Through this experience, the builder was in direct contact with exquisite architectural designs, and therefore it can also be assumed that it was he who designed the Modernist house of Anna Kohoutová. Indeed, he had built a Functionalist villa on Žižkova Street (C4–1879) as early as 1929.

The building of elementary box-like shapes with a smooth façade is characterised by a symmetrical facade layout; the central part of the facade on the levels of the first and second floors protrudes slightly and is lined with slightly elevated vertical sections on the sides. On the level of the last floor, which is in fact a loft with a flat roof, the mass of the house takes the form of a spacious dormer which occupies the entire width of the house.
The house contained eight apartments, usually with two living rooms in the street tract and a kitchen facing the yard. There was a small shop on the ground floor originally, which was adapted into an apartment in the 1960s. A generous five-storey building with a loft, a flat roof and a large terrace was to continue this house on the adjacent corner plot which was also owned by František Kvasnička. This building, with the morphology of a terraced house, was unfortunately never realised.

In recent years, the house of Anna Kohoutová has undergone extensive renovations, during which the facade was fitted with new plaster of a distinct and not entirely suitable colour.

AŠ

Investor

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