hendlův dvůr

The fundament of the volumetric design concept is the respect to the old buildings. In our understanding, this specifically means that the added buildings do not reach higher than the highest ridges of the mansion and their structuring rather conforms to the scale of the original blocks. The existing buildings should this way remain the dominant and characteristic element of the entire compound. The quintessence of the ground arrangement is working with the layout analogous to the one of the historic manor: the same principle of a semi-encased courtyard and an analogy of volumes on an L-shaped footprint. The volumetric composition is then a resultant of two initial assumptions. First, the endeavour that the primary matter, whose slicing and scattering on the site establishes the structure of the development, has the profile of a hip roof (although transformed into a modern detail). Second, the emphasis on keeping such orientation of windows to the cardinal points, to the required and undesired views, obliging to the investor’s plan and conditions of regulations specifying the distances between buildings. Why? A hip roof better corresponds with the existing historic buildings regarding the scale; and, due to the very tight to minimum distances between the buildings, this stepping volume of the new buildings gets more daylight and sunlight shine up to the old and new buildings. We work with a transformed metaphor of transverse slicing the homogeneous mass of the added north wing. This way established units are then scattered over the remaining undeveloped part of the site. We strictly distinguish between the principle of a rougher surface skin and the different inner mass smooth on the inner cut surface (it can even be coloured). However, the crucial element for the general feeling of materialisation builds on a purely natural and ´non-structural´ element – climbing green. This green – analogously referring to the current wildly overgrown west part of the site or even to creeping cemetery vegetation – has to induce a feeling of growing and rooting of the new structure into the context of the historic compound.