Šumava Fisherman's Tavern

A wooden cube hovering above the water
The building proudly asserts its presence in the landscape. An elemental wooden cube with a minimal footprint of 5.5 × 5.5 metres and a height of 5.5 metres, it has a single recessed basement level. Architect Rajniš adds laconically: “...we don’t know how to do cottages, so we don’t.”
Thanks to the sloping terrain, the building appears to levitate above the pond’s bank, its reflection on the water reinforcing the traditional poetry of the South Bohemian landscape. An unobtrusive country track leads to the fishing lodge, which is entered via one of its movable terraces. This can be elegantly lowered into a horizontal position, reviving the ancient tradition of drawbridges at medieval moated strongholds.
A notable feature is the foundation of the substructure immediately beside the bank. Following an assessment of the geology and the need for deep foundations, a cost-effective technology still relatively uncommon in the Czech Republic was employed: dry-driven piles. In a single day, a pile-driving rig drove all the specified concrete piles into the ground, after which a concrete slab was cast over their heads.
The building’s load-bearing skeleton consists of a timber frame on a 2.5 × 2.5-metre grid, braced with steel tension rods. The same module extends vertically through the building, defining the grid of the walls and the division into floors. The timber structure is anchored to the cast-in-place concrete basement and partially carried by braced steel supports. This raises the timber construction above the ground and provides effective protection against ground moisture.