Kaa Studio Revamp a Dilapidated House into a Bright Weekend Home

This project can be found in the town of Lány in the district of Kladno the Czech Republic. Titled House by the Forest, the project involved the reconstruction of an existing suburban house in order to make it fit for use as a weekend home.

The clients contacted kaa-studio, who undertook the redesign, and managed the project’s construction schedule through to completion.

House by the Forest was finished in 2016 and provides the owners with a 1,076.39-square-foot (100-square-meters) property. The house itself is set on a much larger site surrounded by grasslands and trees. The quality of the finish and extent of the works would lead you to believe that it was a new build.

The house contains a small basement, a ground floor and a loft. The existing layout consisted of a series of smaller pokey rooms that weren’t taking advantage of the surroundings or introducing much natural light. It was these aspects which kaa-studio set out to address first. The interior layout was changed significantly, shifting views to the gardens and seeing the introduction of lots of windows.

The front elevation of the house is now littered with windows; the ground floor features patio doors along its length, while the loft has skylights. They also extended the internal living spaces to the exterior through a new annex – a wooden patio. The new windows reflect the changes made to the floor plan on the inside.

The ground floor is now home to a short entrance hallway that takes you into a kitchen/dining room. The master bedroom and outdoor patio can both be access from the kitchen. The master bedroom comes with its own rather large and luxurious bathroom. A second downstairs bathroom can be found in the entrance hall.

Moving to the loft, you’ll be greeted by a spacious open plan room that serves as a living room, study and bedrooms. The bedrooms can be close off from the main space through the use of curtains. On decided on a material palette kaa-studio had this to say: “The neighbourhood of the forest and two old spruces in the front garden are significant… We wanted the house to have the colour of the forest, so the facades are dark, grey-brown.”

For more small houses check out PH Lavalleja, a small home that makes the most of a confined plot in Buenos Aires. Or, Torn Paper House, a home set on a site that measures just 290-square-feet. See all small houses.

Photos © BoysPlayNice