In Vinohrady, a lively district of Prague, amidst parks, tree-lined avenues and pastel-coloured Art Deco buildings, Papundekl Architects has completed a renovation and extension project that sensitively reinterprets the lexicon of a historic building.

The building is part of a residential complex designed in 1925 by architect Rudolf Kvech to provide accommodation for the employees of the neighbouring State Health Institute, which had been established in the area in those years. Set in a large garden, it has three storeys and an attic and is characterised by a clear volumetric tripartition: a brick basement that used to house the cellars, an essential plastered front that corresponds to the residential floors and a generous pavilion roof with clay tiles.

The project has kept the original residential function while proposing the restoration, system adaptation and layout review of the existing building to accommodate a total of six flats (two on each floor) for rental use; on the attic floor, characterised by the presence of the original wooden truss structures brought back to view, a duplex flat is designed for the owner of the complex. 

A simple and unpretentious lexicon characterises the ex-novo works, declared by the use of brick as a trait d'union between the past and the present: the ground-floor extension, which expands the brick plinth eastwards into the garden and includes two new flats, on whose roof a green terrace is created for the flats on the upper level; the essential single-storey pavilion on the west side of the plot, in brickwork integrated with a wooden beam and pillar structure, which houses a gym and sauna for the residents and acts as a screen from the busy adjacent road. 

In the interiors, neutral shades of grey, subtly contrasting with the birch plywood of the built-in furniture and stainless-steel elements, give the rooms a sober and radiant atmosphere.