About the site
The third Opava villa designed by Lubomír and Čestmír Šlapeta was commissioned by lawyer Jaroslav Klimeš. It was built in the north-eastern part of the Kylešovský Hill villa district, among more traditionally conceived detached houses and villas with gabled, hipped, and mansard roofs. In this project, the brothers’ efforts culminated to establish a functionalist model of bourgeois residential living within the conservative, predominantly German environment of Opava, while strengthening the cultural position of the Czech minority in the city.
Drawing on experience from their previous two projects, the architects positioned the villa on a plot surrounded by more traditional villas with small front gardens. Unlike its neighbours, the villa was set further back into the garden, taking advantage of the sloping terrain. The house was elevated above street level on a terrace, emphasized by a stone boundary wall. The wall is interrupted by a stairway with metal gate providing access to the garden and house, and to the west by a rectangular garage entrance built into the slope. This solution created both a larger, park-like front garden and a more prominent forecourt, visually separating the house from the street.
Similar to the Šlapetas’ earlier projects, the villa follows a rectangular plan in a cubic, unornamented form with a flat roof. Its volume is articulated by individually designed strip windows and a single circular window. The main entrance with canopy is located on the west side, while the south side facing the garden features a single-storey conical projection with strip windows, topped by a first-floor terrace connected to the master bedroom. The north façade facing the street consists of strip windows of the service rooms, while the west façade opens with the main entrance and, near the northwestern corner, a circular window that lights the living room. The northern wing houses the service rooms, including kitchen and staircase. In the southern wing facing the garden, the kitchen connects to the dining room, which opens into the large living room that extends into the conical projection. The dining room provides direct access to the garden terrace. The first floor contains bedrooms oriented towards the garden, with service rooms positioned in the northern section.
This type of house was a recurring theme in the Šlapetas’ work. In this case, the brothers built upon their semi-detached villa for engineers of the Czechoslovak Nitrogen Works in Moravská Ostrava–Mariánské Hory (1935–1936). They often complemented their architecture with built-in furniture and other interior elements, creating holistic works that integrated the design of the house, its interior, and the garden. This approach is also evident here: the dining room extends to a garden terrace with stone paving and steps leading further into the garden with an organically shaped pond. The house thus represents a synthesis of rational functionalism with organic architecture and is the most striking example of this trend in Opava and its surroundings.
The turbulent course of local history also left its mark on this villa. Due to the family’s Czech orientation, they were forced to leave the house in 1940. Jaroslav Klimeš then lived in Moravská Ostrava and could only return after liberation in 1945. Interestingly, the future Ostrava architect Ivo Klimeš spent his childhood and youth here. The villa has remained in the ownership of the Klimeš family’s descendants to this day.
MSt
