Letohradska | Evzen Rosenberg
Czech Republic | 1937 | soft use
| Address: | Letohradska 52/7 Holesovice 756, Prague |
| Work Type: | new built |
| Context: | urban |
| Location: | One of a series of 1930s small luxury apartment buildings in the centre of Prague |
| Number of Storeys: | 7-storey |
| Type of Building: | tenement / apartment house |
| Number of Units: | 12 |
Description
The Letohradska apartment block in Prague employs a strategy of indeterminate space, providing rooms without specific designation. In contrast to Bruno Taut’s Hufeisensiedlung, where the same strategy is applied to mass housing, Rosenberg used it for inner city luxury apartment houses with generous space standards.
Each floor, apart the top and ground, has two units: one 2-room (just over 80m2) and one 3-room apartment (around 125m2). The individual rooms within each apartment can be accessed via a central hall. The larger apartments have added flexibility of use through additional doors or sliding walls, between two rooms.
The open column and beam construction allows for the relatively free distribution of rooms. Partition walls are non-loadbearing, which leaves the entire area of each storey indetermined as to their specific use - as can be seen in the design of the top storey apartment in the same development. The only limit in the subdivision of the plan is imposed by the number of connection points to service ducts and the relatively deep plan of the building.
References
Kohout, M., and V. Slapeta, Prague, 20th Century Architecture, New York: Springer Guide Books, 1999.
Peichl, G., and V. Slapeta, Czech Functionalism 1918-1938, London: Architectural Association, 1987.
Svácha, R., The Architecture of New Prague 1895-1945, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1995.
Teige, K., Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia, Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2000.