About the site
This is the first functionalist house in Opava, which introduced the ideas of the European architectural avant-garde to the local context in a pure form and with confident restraint.
Lawyer Radim Hess first encountered the avant-garde work of the young architects Lubomír (1908–1983) and Čestmír (1908–1999) Šlapeta at the exhibition of the Moravian-Silesian Association of Fine Artists, held in the Ostrava House of Arts in the autumn of 1933. He was so impressed by their designs that he decided to commission them. For this project, he and his wife Ellen purchased a plot from the Spořilov Cooperative in the then Komenda district in the south-western part of Opava, where, similar to Kylešovský Hill on the opposite side of town, new detached houses and villas were being built.
Construction began in April 1934, carried out by the building company Förster and Unger of Hlučín, who had previously built the Šlapetas’ Kremmer Villa. Work was completed at the end of December that year, although the administrative formalities extended into the following year. The house represents the architects’ search for an ideal type of small-scale residence, with a floor area under 80 m², which entitled the owners to exemption from property tax for 25 years. Its plan is essentially rectangular, articulated by a cut-back at the north-eastern corner. On the garden side, the south façade is expanded by a square conservatory topped with a first-floor terrace. By extending the cubic mass in this way, the architects aligned the villa with a broader group of projects in which a simple block was enriched by a projection or conservatory. An example is Karel Urbánek’s villa in Slezská Ostrava (1933–1934), where the cubic mass is enhanced by a conical conservatory raised on slender steel supports.
The façades of the villa are defined by individually designed strip windows. The north front, facing the street, incorporates the main entrance, reached via an external staircase and sheltered by a bold cantilevered canopy. Already in this first Opava project, the Šlapetas applied functional principles in the internal layout. Immediately beyond the entrance lies a hall that opens to the living hall with dining room in the southern wing and the kitchen and toilet in the northern wing. The staircase also connects directly to the basement. The functional zoning continues upstairs – from the landing, two bedrooms face the garden to the south, each lit by strip windows, while a third bedroom with French windows opens westwards. Also on this floor is a bathroom in the north-eastern corner, equipped with a chute leading down to the basement laundry room. This modern convenience, inspired by American architecture, was complemented by other advanced materials and constructions. The basement was built of rammed concrete with a reinforced-concrete beam ceiling, while other ceilings employed the “ladder system” with rigid Simplex-Rekord ceramic inserts. Interiors were
finished with coloured rubber flooring on xylolite in dark grey, black-and-white, blue, and sand-brown marbled patterns. Built-in furniture was supplied by the Opava carpentry and furniture firm ICOS.
Following the annexation of Opava to Nazi Germany in October 1938, the Hess family was forced to relocate to nearby Moravská Ostrava, returning only after liberation, by which time they had changed their surname to Květ. They later moved to Brno.
Both Lubomír and Čestmír Šlapeta had trained at the Academy of Arts in Wrocław under Hans Scharoun, one of the leading representatives of avant-garde functionalist and organic architecture. They admired the forms of ocean liners, automobiles, and aircraft, which they incorporated into their designs in various creative ways. The villa for Radim Hess is one such variation, belonging to a broader group of modest cubic houses and villas by the Šlapetas, in which the typological framework was enriched with the motif of a conservatory attached to the south façade.
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