There Was a Pink House on the Slope

Building a house on a slope is never easy. You either have to dig one corner of the building into the hillside, or alternatively prop the protruding end on piles.

When the same challenge was presented to the (now defunct) HŠH architect studio based in Czech Republic, they decided to approach the problem creatively.

Considering that the client was a home-cinema addict, they decided to project the natural slope angle of the hill inside the building. Crazy, I know! However, it’s a unique building and you can see in the pictures how they’ve managed to execute this house plan.

The sloped surfaces are mixed with conventional horizontal surfaces and this creates a surprising flow to the whole plan. I wouldn’t say I’d necessarily want to live in such a house but I can certainly see the appeal.

The Villa Hermina is based around the home cinema, which, conveniently enough, is located on the main slope. The more functional rooms like kitchen and diner are sitting on the few horizontal floors that there are in the building.

Although from the outside the house seems small, it is deceptive. Mainly because of its huge windows. Besides, the lower levels are dug into the hillside. As you can see from this house plan, there are 5 levels with the master bedroom (ahem… it’s rather small) located at the very top on the small horizontal platform.

As for the pink outer coating – did you think it’s adobe? Yeah, that was my first reaction. Unfortunately, it’s not an adobe house. The pink stuff is coloured polyurethane foam. I agree, it’s not very in sync with eco homes, but the material has been used to provide an excellent uncompromised insulation. To be perfectly honest, although polyurethane is not amongst green materials, it’s not extremely bad. I’ve myself used the stuff to sort certain challenges… tut, tut!

All pics by HŠH