Machonin Villa, Brutalist villa in Smíchov, Czech Republic.
Machonin Villa is a residential home in Prague's Smíchov district that features exposed concrete, strong geometric shapes, and a focus on raw structural elements as its main design feature. The building shows how materials and construction methods become the decoration themselves in this architectural approach.
The villa's design dates from 1968, and the architects Věra and Vladimír Machonin built it for themselves between 1974 and 1978. They placed the closed, cube-like house on a steep slope in a bend of Na Hřebenkách street, on the edge of the Petřín nature reserve, within the Smíchov heritage zone.
The villa is the couple's own house, designed by Věra and Vladimír Machonin, whose signature "rusty" metal cladding recurs on the parapets and the high attic band. The two upper volumes are broken into separate parts with steep pitched roofs, a deliberate contrast with the flat glazed bands below.
The villa stands in a bend of Na Hřebenkách street on a steep slope below Strahov, at the edge of the Petřín nature reserve and within the Smíchov heritage zone. Its reinforced terraces sit above the viewing path through the park, so the house is best seen from that path rather than from the street. The site is hidden and inconspicuous; the building is a private home, so view it from outside.
The villa stands on a steep slope in a bend of Na Hřebenkách street, on the edge of the Petřín nature reserve, and its reinforced terraces sit above a viewing path through the park. The two-storey house has fully glazed ground- and first-floor bands, with parapets and a tall attic clad in the owners' characteristic rusty metal.
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