Eco-friendly and healthy

Králův Dvůr is a town in the Czech Republic located about seventy kilometres from Prague in southern Bohemia, a region famous for its mild climate and fairy-tale landscape with deep valleys and rivers winding through forests, fields and vineyards as well as mediaeval towns with castles, palaces and gardens.
It is also the location of a new residence designed by LUCERN s.r.o., a property developer renowned for its turnkey projects combining high-quality solutions with meticulous construction works. Key design features include the use of natural and recyclable materials to ensure eco-compatibility; a high-performance envelope with a low heat exchange coefficient for reduced energy consumption; and a favourable orientation to ensure brightly lit, comfortable interiors.
This house displays all these principles. The harmonious combination of brick, wood and ceramic is already evident on the exterior of the building, where the geometric composition of pure volumes fits in perfectly with the garden and the swimming pool. And it is repeated with reassuring consistency inside, where the soft, measured aesthetics underscore the seamless continuity between interior and exterior. This sense of continuity is further emphasised by the ceramic floor covering, which consists of Sand version tiles from Panaria Ceramica’s Prime Stone collection, a stone-effect porcelain tile that conveys the same sense of solidity as the local stone blocks strewn around the garden. Suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, it comes in 7 sizes, 3 thicknesses, 5 colours and 6 decorations and offers designers plenty of scope for creativity.
While the pale, luminous colour of sand was chosen for the floors (in a 45×90 cm size for the exterior and a 90×90 size for the living area), the dark grey of the Black version was selected for the walls of the living area as it coordinates perfectly with the natural tones of wood and brick.
The large space is kept free from partitions to avoid blocking the flow of natural light flooding in through the windows. It is a single open-plan space carefully organised into living, dining and kitchen areas, where wood and copper lamps are used to differentiate between the functions of the spaces. Meticulously designed, it is warm and welcoming, never monotonous or excessive. The monolithic grey fireplace dominates the sofa and TV area, while the ceiling stands out for its original parquet effect with staggered slats, a surprising and slightly disconcerting element that extends as far as the metal-legged dining table next to the brick wall adjoining the open kitchen. Here, wood is the dominant furnishing material, while the dark ceramic wall tiles add a touch of colour. The wood-porcelain combination continues in the bathrooms, where the Prime collection is again used but this time in the paler Silver grey colour and a decorated version chosen for the wall: the 30×60 cm Muretto tiles recalling the staggered wooden slats present on the living room ceiling.