About the site
Originally part of a row of houses, this two-storey building with a slightly trapezoidal plan and a mono-pitched roof represents the second functionalist work in Opava by Lubomír Šlapeta (1908–1983), this time designed independently without his brother Čestmír.
The street façade, with horizontal windows, entrance, and originally also a garage door (later filled in), is deliberately restrained, reflecting the so-called white functionalism that emphasized rational principles. The ground floor housed the surgery of the client, Dr. Karel Martínek, extending into the rear wing with a slightly angled conservatory window overlooking a Japanese-style garden with a circular pond. In the south-east corner of the plan stands a spiral staircase leading to the upper floor. From the staircase, the upper-storey façade projects in a skewed line, supported on steel columns. This overhang creates a covered garden loggia connected to the Japanese-style garden. The upper floor served as the owner’s flat, centred on a dynamically designed living hall with a ceiling formed as a vaulted segment made from plastered metal lath. The hall opened via strip windows both to the street and to the garden. The continuous space was flanked by the kitchen, master bedroom, and children’s room, all with built-in furniture.
After Opava was annexed by Nazi Germany, the family moved to Olomouc and never returned. Until the 1980s, the ground floor was used by the District Institute of National Health, while the upper floor remained residential. Subsequent alterations resulted in the loss of the built-in furniture, the removal of the hall’s vaulted ceiling, and other detrimental interventions.
Listing the house as a cultural monument has ensured its survival, especially as nearby apartment developments show the local trend towards replacing older small-scale housing with large residential blocks.
The Martínek house was built in at the same time as the villa for JUDr. Eduard Liska in Slezská Ostrava – one of the most striking works by Lubomír and Čestmír Šlapeta in the vein of functionalist organic architecture. Like the Liska villa, this project in Opava-Kateřinky – with its continuous spatial concept, integration of exterior and interior, the motif of a faux vault in the living hall, and the use of built-in furniture as a spatial element – anticipated further trends and directions in Lubomír Šlapeta’s later work.
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