Functionalist Apartment with Pink Piggy Recasts a 1930s Prague Home
Functionalist Apartment with Pink Piggy sits in Prague, Czech Republic, as the personal home of Martin Cenek Architecture. The renovation reworks a late-1930s tenement apartment with care, balancing the building’s modernist bones and a precise, contemporary refit. It’s an apartment, but it reads as a study in restraint and memory, folding original fabric and new craft into a clear, livable composition.
Daylight washes the tiled street facade before finding the living room’s raw lid of concrete. Under that cool plane, warm oak and quiet white sharpen the room’s tone.
This is an apartment renovation in Prague by Martin Cenek Architecture, the architect’s own home and long-term project. The work keys into interior palette and furnishing: original fabric restored, a new insert precisely made, and a calm mix of period pieces and contemporary lines holding the rooms together.
Expose the Ceiling
The living room’s reinforced concrete ceiling, once hidden under soffit and plaster, is stripped and cleaned. Its cool gray surface sets a firm datum for the warmer elements below, bringing honest structure into daily view and giving the room a taut, graphic edge against the white-lacquered planes.
Renew the Fabric
Original windows, doors, and their hardware are repaired rather than replaced. Underfoot, new oak parquet replicates the 1930s pattern exactly, letting the floor read as continuous heritage while quietly meeting contemporary standards in finish and build.
Insert the Core
A new furniture block absorbs storage, a generous hidden bathroom, and part of the kitchen. Clad in stained oak veneers and white lacquer, the insert draws a crisp boundary that orders circulation, cleans up sightlines, and frees the rooms to breathe without visible clutter.
Thread Old and New
The palette leans on simple contrasts: oiled oak warmth against bright lacquer, heritage fittings beside fine-line contemporary profiles. That clarity keeps the rooms legible, while texture—grain at hand, cool metal at the latch—prevents the minimalism from reading sterile.
Furnish with Memory
Furniture carries family history into the present. Four Thonet dining chairs from great-grandparents, a Thonet armchair, and an Anýž table lamp from a great-uncle’s office anchor the dining and reading zones with lived patina and precise curves.
Elsewhere, a functionalist Ez12 tubular chair designed in 1930 by Karel Ort sits near contemporary pieces like Nendo’s Fusion sofa. Ceiling lights and several works by sculptor Jaroslav Horejc round out the room, giving the minimal shell a layered rhythm and measured shine.
Recast the Kitchen
The original kitchen changes role as the plan evolves. With the pantry and old bathroom removed, the new block consolidates service, so cooking, eating, and lounging align more naturally along light and view.
A pink piglet stool waits in the hall—cheeky, useful, and disarming. It punctures any museum-guard impulse and keeps the refinements from hardening into reverence.
Late-1930s modernism frames the daily routine, and the update keeps faith with that clarity. Morning light touches concrete, oak, and white lacquer, then moves across the parquet in tidy bands.
Nothing shouts. The apartment works through balance: a disciplined shell, tactile materials, and furniture with memory—an intimate modernism tuned for ordinary days.
Photography by Alex Shoots Buildings
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