July 11, 2018

H3T Architeki Suspends Pitch-Black Mini-House Underneath Czech Bridge

The H3T Architekti team is interested in “floating” objects outdoors, such as this wooden hut on a suspended platform in Pardubice. Photography by Boys Play Nice Photography and Concept.

Just before Christmas, H3T Architekti principal Vít Šimek and four colleagues journeyed from their Prague office to an abandoned military training zone in nearby Pardubice, a picturesque woodland locals have co-opted as unofficial parkland. Their truck was so laden with building materials that it had to be pushed up a steep hill en route to the final destination: a disused rail bridge. After securing steel aircraft cables to the bridge’s pillars, the Czech team worked late into the night by electric-generator light to assemble a 46-square-foot birch-plywood hut on a suspended platform. The result? A pitch-black mini-house that appears to hover 10 feet above terra firma.

The guerilla art installation bespoke the architects’ passion for “floating” objects outdoors. (In a previous experiment, they suspended a polycarbonate sauna above the Ohre river). The elevated hut was a thought-provoking response to “the mysterious qualities of the landscape,” Šimek explains. “Some called it ‘the witch’s house!’”

The interior of the suspended hut includes a log burner, patio set, and sleep loft. Photography by Boys Play Nice Photography and Concept.

Inside, a log burner, patio set, and sleep loft for two—all black—provided a note of domesticity. But for the 39 days before the military requested its removal, the hut was not easily entered: Šimek hid the necessary ladder in nearby undergrowth, to be found only by the intrepid.

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