25-10-2019

A summer house by DDAANN

DDAANN (Daniel Rohan, Daniel Baudis),

BoysPlayNice ,

holiday houses, Housing,

The Czech architecture firm, DDAANN – headed by Daniel Rohan and Daniel Baudis – has completed a holiday house for three generations in central Bohemia. A design solution that is as elegant as it is simple, ensuring a relaxing getaway for everyone.



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A summer house by DDAANN A lot of us spend our holidays with the extended family. On the one hand, it’s a great, enriching experience because you can enjoy the time you spend together, on the other it’s also a challenge if the various members of the family want to hang onto their moments of privacy.
DDAANN, the architecture practice headed by Daniel Rohan and Daniel Baudis addressed these issues when they designed a summer house for a family with two grandparents, parents and two children in central Bohemia. The house itself stands in the middle of a large green meadow, near a copse of trees, a really relaxing country context for the three generations who can spend lots of weekends and the whole summer here.
To get around the classic problems of sharing a confined space, the architects broke down the house into a number of small, interconnecting volumes, all of which have a different purpose. 
The focal point and real heart of the project is the central zone of the house with a communal zone. This accommodates a living room with fireplace, a dining room and a kitchen. The large sliding glass doors open onto a patio with a timber deck, and the garden, blurring the lines between interiors and exteriors and, therefore, giving you the impression of bigger rooms. 
Apart from this shared living area, each generation has its own space to protect the privacy of all the occupants. The grandparents have their own “house”, a quintessential volume to the left of the communal area. They have their own living area, bedroom and bathroom facilities. On the other side of the communal zone, the parents and their children share the two-storey volume but they all have their own private areas. The parents on the ground floor have a spacious bedroom, a bathroom and a studio that can be used as a guest room when needed. Then again, the children have their own kingdom in a room on the upper floor, where they can also enjoy the great views of the surrounding area.
All of these rooms are furnished with light wood bespoke furniture for a peaceful, minimal atmosphere, leaving behind the stereotype of a country house full of clutter but still retaining its own special character.
The residential parts of the house are completed by an entryway with service areas, a shed with workshop and a carport.
The building is connected to a south terrace with a tall pillar in a corner. This pillar supports a plant-covered pergola and it also has a garden shower and a small wind turbine rotating on its tip. The whole house is surrounded by a large garden with fruit trees and a kitchen garden with herbs and vegetables, ready to be freshly picked and used in the kitchen. This is relaxing because gardening is good for you and it is also sustainable because the family cooks most of their food using the ingredients grown there – the perfect 0-mile situation.
The house completed by DDAANN is, therefore, a great place to spend quality time with the family, all thanks to a project that brings together the desire to spend time together with the need to protect the privacy of all the members of the family. A win-win situation!

Christiane Bürklein

Project: Studio DDAANN, http://www.ddaann.cz/en/
Architects: Daniel Rohan, Daniel Baudis
Project team: Klára Koldová (junior architect), Lucia Horkavá (junior architect)
Year: 2015-2019
Location: Central Bohemia, Czech Republic
Images: BoysPlayNice, www.boysplaynice.com

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