authors: Boris Redčenkov, Prokop Tomášek, Jaroslav Wertig
cooperation: Iveta Chitovová
main contractors: Bílek, Plesná
investor: Lea a Josef Petákovi
photographer: foto: Andrea Lhotáková

Extending accommodation capacity in the Sanatorium of Dr. Peták.

The Sanatorium of Dr. Peták completed in 2001 offers complete spa care: balneal treatment, accommodation, and boarding.
The operation of the facility soon showed that the balneological part could satisfy even greater number of spa visitors than the number for which the original accommodation part of the sanatorium had been proportioned. The task therefore was to increase the accommodation capacity by further 18 beds, to create more varied hotel room standards, to extend the administration facility.

As the original building forms an enclosed design unit, the increased capacity has been designed as a separate extension not competing with the original building. The extension has been designed in the form of separate pavilion placed in the garden with a service connection with the main building in the form of a light connection neck. The extension is a sort of a greenhouse or winter garden placed on one of the terraces formed in the garden.

During their long-term stays the spa visitors favoured

very much the hotel rooms with private loggias which were gradually glazed so that they may be used now all the year round. Therefore when conceiving the extension the poetics of a seasonal structure (allowing easy connection of the exterior and the interior space) have been considered from the very beginning. Five rooms and four suites have been designed so that they may be divided to separate parts. The entrance part and the sanitary facilities follow the same standard as the original building; the bedroom part of the room is detachable from the

living part by sliding glass barriers.

The living part becomes a loggia at the moment when the glazed cladding of the building is removed and is folded at the jamb. The whole building thus may be converted to a sort of a veranda. The seasonal character is emphasized by the external blinds of burlap fabric. The autonomy of the pavilion in the whole composition is reflected in the structural design, the selection of materials, and a white colour scheme. Unlike the strongly horizontal composition

of the original building the extension is almost completely defined by the vertical grid of assembled window elements. As regards its structure it is a walled system with monolithic floors. The connecting bridge is based on the steel skeleton of the original building; it’s a stool of the main building that lightly touches the mass of the extension. By gradual extending towards the restaurant the traffic element becomes a social space – a sort of an extended lobby. The slowly rising ceiling then gently blends the different structural heights of the

extension and the ground floor of the sanatorium.