Architektura’s brick-built retirement home for the Town of Nový Bydžov reinterprets the orchard, cemetery walls and open Main Bohemian landscape to develop 4 courtyard homes organized around light-filled atriums.
Prague-based studio Architektura has completed a new senior citizens’ home on the edge of Nový Bydžov, on the site of a previous orchard surrounding to the town healthcare facility. Across the roadway, a cemetery and church mark the approach to the historical centre, their long brick walls and mature trees developing a peaceful, reflective character. It is within this setting– between fields and forest horizons typical of Central Bohemia– that the single-storey building takes its place.
Commissioned by the Town of Nový Bydžov to supply accommodation for around 60 locals, the home is developed as four separately functioning families, totally barrier-free and linked by a central core. The plan forms a compact, clover-like composition: 4 wings set up orthogonally around a shared heart, each aligned to the cardinal points.
The designers avoided the institutional design of long double-loaded passages. Instead, each household is arranged around its own internal atrium, with bed rooms positioned along the perimeter and blood circulation looping around a planted courtyard. The plan creates short, understandable paths and makes sure that corridors are naturally lit, visually linked to gardens and animated by moving patterns of daylight.
Each household accommodates approximately 15 homeowners, together with staff centers, storage and technical rooms. A shared home opens straight onto a protected internal garden, while every bed room has a small personal terrace. Sets of families are connected by bigger external gardens, encouraging both self-reliance and connection. From the south-facing entryway, visitors go into a generous hall where an oval main atrium brings light deep into the plan; reception and waiting areas sit together with, before the structure gently disperses into its four domestic clusters.
Externally, the project’s brick façades echo the cemetery walls opposite, their horizontal focus punctuated by a regular rhythm of French windows that supply direct access to balconies. Subtle variations in shading devices identify each wing: rectangular steel frames to the southwest, sloping types to the northeast, and an unshaded elevation to the northwest where direct sunshine is limited. Four unique brick patterns even more reinforce the identity of each household, continuing internally in secondary reception points and restroom detailing.
Inside, brick is paired with white surface areas to increase the sense of light and calm. Floorings are custom-made using scanned pictures of regional flowers and grasses, embedded into the surface area and prepared at space thresholds to develop a gentle, instinctive wayfinding strategy. The 4 homes are named appropriately– Travinová (Grass), Černýšová (Bartsia), Heřmánková (Chamomile) and Pampelišková (Dandelion)– grounding the fairly large structure in the specificity of location.
The outcome is a ground-level home planned to be walked and through: a sequence of gardens, courtyards and light-filled interiors that temper the symbolic weight of the surrounding cemetery with an environment of dignity and everyday life. Delivered in close collaboration with the municipality and project group, the home reimagines later life not as retreat, but as a calm and generous extension of neighborhood.