House in Čakovice: Calm Minimalist House for a Growing Prague Family
House in Čakovice anchors a young family in Prague, Czech Rep., with a clear, minimalist house shaped by Edit! Architects. The compact volume holds a two-level layout that separates quiet work from shared daily life while drawing long views to the hedge-wrapped garden. Inside, a central gallery ties rooms together with light and sightlines.
A light beige cube meets the side street, its flat roof and textured plaster catching the change of daylight across the day. From here, views slip past the quiet facade toward a deep garden and swimming pool, where tall hedges frame a more private world behind the house.
This house in Prague’s Čakovice district is a compact family home that leans on a clear, two-level plan and a disciplined volume. Edit! Architects work with the local tradition of Czech functionalism, translating it into a contemporary layout that privileges direct circulation, shared rooms, and a strong visual link between floors. The core experience turns on how family members move, see, and meet across the house rather than on decorative flourish.
Organizing Family Life
Daily routines unfold across two levels that separate daytime activity from night-time retreat. The ground floor holds the living room, a study, and a bathroom, keeping shared and service rooms close to the garden. Upstairs, two children’s bedrooms, the master bedroom, and a second bathroom form a quieter band dedicated to rest, privacy, and slower moments. Relationships between these rooms are carefully drawn so that work, play, and sleep each find an appropriate territory without breaking the sense of one home.
Central Gallery Sequence
At the heart of the house, a gallery ties the plan together. This vertical and horizontal connector links the two floors, extending views between levels and across the interior. Children standing at the gallery edge can watch activity in the living room, staying aware of what happens below without losing their own domain. Parents move through the same gallery upstairs, remaining connected to children’s rooms while still enjoying a degree of separation established by the bathroom and circulation zone.
Quiet Work, Clear Boundaries
The ground-floor study sits apart from the main living area, a deliberate pause in the otherwise open daily flow. Someone working there stays close to family life yet can close a door on noise, screens, and play. On the upper level, a similar clarity governs the layout, as the master bedroom stands apart from the children’s rooms with the bathroom and gallery forming a subtle buffer. These calibrated boundaries allow simultaneous use of the house for work, rest, and shared gathering without constant negotiation.
Light and Changing Volumes
Gentle terrain on the site allows a living room with increased ceiling height, giving this main room extra volume and a sense of openness. Structural and formal simplicity from the outside is offset indoors by an irregular composition of windows that break the regularity of the cube. Daylight becomes a planning tool: the considered arrangement of the upper floor lets western light reach the east-facing living room, filling it with changing light from morning through late afternoon. As hours and seasons shift, the character of the interior adjusts with them.
Garden As Daily Extension
The living room extends directly into the garden, turning outdoor ground into a daily living area rather than a distant backdrop. A tall hedge lines the perimeter, screening interior life from surrounding views and giving the family a sense of enclosure without heavy built walls. Landscape design by Partero studio coordinates planting and the swimming pool with the house’s volume, while construction by Rojami realizes the simple form with solid, pragmatic detailing.
By day, the house works as a quiet frame for routes between garden, living room, gallery, and bedrooms. As evening light drops across the textured plaster and the hedge darkens outside, the clear plan continues to guide movement, keeping family members near yet comfortably apart.
Photography courtesy of Edit! Architects
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