About the site
The two-storey villa of civil engineer and retired provincial official Jaroslav Volenec stands in the northern part of the villa district on Kylešovský Hill, where individual housing development had been under way since the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is distinguished by a striking composition of cubic volumes with flat roofs and ribbon windows. Its placement within a garden with a decorative front section corresponds to concepts derived from the garden city movement.
The villa is dominated by the central cuboid mass of the house, to which are attached additional blocks – a veranda, a projection of the living room, a bay window at the south-western corner, a garden projection with a first-floor terrace, and the vertical form of the staircase expressed in the rounded motif of a stairwell risalit. Apart from the base with a simple cornice, the mass of the building is articulated by slender crowning cornices at the level of the flat roofs. The interior layout, reflected in the external composition, consists of a veranda, a two-flight staircase leading to the upper floor, and a hall-type arrangement with living rooms opening to the east, south, and west.
The design of the house combines motifs of architectural modernism from the period before the First World War with echoes of emerging functionalism. Their interplay shows that Volenec, above all a civil engineer, sought to reflect contemporary architectural trends, though without the experience of a formally trained and artistically accomplished architect. Nevertheless, he succeeded in creating a tastefully designed villa that can be ranked among the modern individual houses of the interwar era. The building has recently been renovated, including the replacement of windows and doors and the installation of new fencing, while still retaining to some degree its original architectural character.
MSt
