Ela Pospíšilová’s house
1931

Pramenní 587/3 (Plzeň) Plzeň Severní Předměstí
Public transport: Zadní Roudná (BUS 20)
GPS: 49.7591111, 13.3810955
Architect:
Builder:

Although many buildings were erected in Pilsen in the early 1930s with elementary right-angled shapes and unornamented facades, built according to the modern principles of scientific or emotional Functionalism, a number of more conservatively designed family houses still found their place. These projects reveal that many local builders still resisted fully assimilating the latest trends in architecture and continued to favour a morphology based on architectural tradition, although also imbued with modern elements.

A characteristic example of this type of building is a family house in Roudná, designed in 1931 by the prominent Pilsen architect and long-time employee of the municipal technical office, Hanuš Zápal, for Eliška Pospíšilová, daughter of a local landowner, Josef Fürich (at that time she was the widow of the military pilot and staff captain Vladimír Pospíšil). The architect drafted the plans at the time when his probably most architecturally progressive building was being erected - the Functionalist Luděk Pik municipal school in Doubravka. The traditionalist character of Eliška Pospíšilová’s family house can therefore be attributed precisely to her requirements for the formal concept of the building.

The villa with a raised basement and two storeys was built on an irregular, complicated ground plan within a large, gently sloping plot. The plainly conceived facades, the effect of which Zápal based on a contrast between large expanses of smooth, light-coloured rendering and pointed brickwork (with a stone socle) are "crowned" on the northwest and southwest sides of the house with Classicist triangular gables. In the northern corner, where the main, slightly recessed entrance is situated, the set of volumes is supplemented with the semi-cylindrical mass of the roofed staircase avant-corps.

Each of the storeys holds one separate three-room flat with a large hall, kitchen and other operational facilities. The orientation of the residential rooms towards the southeast is revealed by large windows set into a rectangular bay, surmounted by a small terrace at the level of the loft. The basement also held a living room with hygienic facilities for household staff.

The house to this day retains its original early 1930s architectural look and thus remains one of the most characteristic examples of Pilsen Modern, albeit not radically progressive architecture.

 


 

Investor

Ela (Eliška) Pospíšilová

Sources

  • Archiv Odboru stavebně správního, Technický úřad Magistrátu města Plzně