"Every house should be a piece of the city."

A parking house is not a city-forming element in terms of urban typology. How does the volume of a parking house define an urban block? How can it enrich the place without parasitizing it, devaluing its potential and taking it out of the context of the traditional surrounding buildings, its scale? How to justify the existence of a car park on a site that has a completely different potential? We decided to first examine the potential of the site in terms of the required capacity. We applied the most efficient parking system, i.e. a parking three-tract with perpendicular stalls along a two-way road. Despite some complications on the 1st floor, where the supply yard of the neighbouring department store had to be implemented into the system, and the needs of the existing utilities, we were able to easily achieve the required capacity. Plus, we were left with the volume along Purkyňovy Street defining the entire northeastern frontage of the city block. We used this volume to design a full-fledged urban apartment building with an active ground floor and 42 small apartments. In this way, we naturally divided the considered space into smaller operational and material units. The subdivided volume thus approximated the scale of the surrounding development and the granularity of the image of this part of the city. The proposal therefore takes advantage of the opportunity to diversify function and thus diversify scale. As a result, it need not be seen as parasitic, but rather as enriching the diversity of the urban composition. And this without the need for formal gestures. 

The apartment building and the car park are typologically, operationally and structurally separate buildings sharing only the underground floor.

Because the parking structure manifests itself into the urban environment only in a reduced way on the southeast and northwest street frontages of the block, there is no need to obscure its actual function. We therefore leave it to appear as a technicist building with an abstract, transparent façade. It consists of a steel and concrete structure with a structural height of 2.7m. The solution is designed to require the lowest possible level of fire and air protection measures, rainwater drainage without the need for oil separators, etc. (open escape staircases, wind facades, roofed parking on the top floor). In contrast to the parking building, the apartment building is designed in the principle of an opening in the wall i.e. as traditional plaster architecture in the area.It consists of a reinforced concrete skeleton with structural heights of 3m on the residential floors. The simple elegance of the façades, playing with banality, corresponds to the simple functioning of both the apartment and parking building. Despite the need to respect the complex relationships on the 1st floor, we have achieved a simple, clear operating scheme immediately assimilable by the user. For safer and more comfortable handling of parkers, we designed a double entrance and exit portal and chose the exit to Purkyňova Street. Two underground floors are designed for residents with check-in at the entrance in the 1st floor. We believe that we have managed to find a dignified solution for the location of a large-capacity parking building in the centre of the historic city. A solution that reconciles the modern needs of the city with its traditional character.