2008 Family house Zdiměřice

“Once, while crossing the Sahara, I was grabbed by the intimacy of traditional Berber dwellings with their closed courtyard lined with small rooms carved into the sand. Instinctively, we used a similar principle in Zdiměřice – a Prague suburb – in its own desert of new single-family houses” Standa Fiala says. The house is fixed to its flat terrain, and its square shape is cut into by an organically-shaped “gulf”, allowing the garden to enter the centre of the interior. Sliding walls of woven willow-branches create intimacy. The garden could have been left wild, but the desire for an architect’s design finally won out. The large trees beyond the fence can be illuminated with flood lights in the evening. Water is supplied from a deep artesian well; the heating and cooling system is based on a combination of a heat pump and solar panels. A network of plastic capillaries is cast inside the ceiling and walls, which can fully heat or cool the space, as if the house were breathing naturally.