Architektura’s brick-built retirement home for the Town of Nový Bydžov reinterprets the orchard, cemetery walls and open Central Bohemian landscape to create four courtyard households arranged around light-filled atriums.

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Filip Šlapal

Prague-based studio Architektura has completed a new senior citizens’ home on the edge of Nový Bydžov, on the site of a former orchard adjacent to the town hospital. Across the road, a cemetery and church mark the approach to the historic centre, their long brick walls and mature trees establishing a quiet, contemplative 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 provide accommodation for around 60 residents, the home is conceived as four independently functioning households, fully barrier-free and connected by a central core. The plan forms a compact, clover-like composition: four wings arranged orthogonally around a shared heart, each aligned to the cardinal points.

The architects avoided the institutional model of long double-loaded corridors. Instead, each household is organised around its own internal atrium, with bedrooms positioned along the perimeter and circulation looping around a planted courtyard. The arrangement creates short, legible routes and ensures that corridors are naturally lit, visually connected to gardens and animated by shifting patterns of daylight.

Each household accommodates approximately 15 residents, together with staff facilities, storage and technical rooms. A shared living space opens directly onto a sheltered internal garden, while every bedroom has a small private terrace. Pairs of households are linked by larger external gardens, encouraging both independence and connection. From the south-facing entrance, visitors enter a generous hall where an oval central atrium brings light deep into the plan; reception and waiting areas sit alongside, before the building gently disperses into its four domestic clusters.

Externally, the project’s brick façades echo the cemetery walls opposite, their horizontal emphasis punctuated by a regular rhythm of French windows that provide direct access to terraces. Subtle variations in shading devices distinguish each wing: rectangular steel frames to the southwest, sloping forms to the northeast, and an unshaded elevation to the northwest where direct sunlight is limited. Four distinct brick patterns further reinforce the identity of each household, continuing internally in secondary reception points and bathroom detailing.

Inside, brick is paired with white surfaces to heighten the sense of light and calm. Floors are custom-designed using scanned images of local flowers and grasses, embedded into the surface and drawn up at room thresholds to create a gentle, intuitive wayfinding strategy. The four households are named accordingly – Travinová (Grass), Černýšová (Bartsia), Heřmánková (Chamomile) and Pampelišková (Dandelion) – grounding the relatively large building in the specificity of place.

The result is a ground-level house intended to be walked around and through: a sequence of gardens, courtyards and light-filled interiors that temper the symbolic weight of the adjacent cemetery with an atmosphere of dignity and everyday life. Delivered in close collaboration with the municipality and project team, the home reimagines later life not as retreat, but as a calm and generous continuation of community.

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