Blacksmith Barn Zbytiny

The story of this barn in the Bohemian Forest leads us to an old house originally planned as a refuge for the family of a university teacher surrounded by forests and meadows. The initial renovation, however, was far from a success, and the barn had to endure a series of failed alterations and intrusive elements. The desperate owner eventually changed course, turned to the Byró architecture studio for help, and – under the architects’ strict guidance – renovated the building with his own two hands.

The wilderness as a laboratory for human society

The Bohemian Forest is one of the largest regions in the Czech Republic where one can still experience solitude and encounter wilderness. Even so, people have long had a negative impact on this mountain range along the country’s borders. After the Second World War, this extraordinarily valuable territory suffered from the expulsion of its original German population, then it was divided by the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain, and today it is besieged by developers eager to build one apartment complex after another.

Since the 1990s, environmentalists have engaged in protracted disputes with local inhabitants and politicians about whether to let nature run its course or to allow logging and agricultural activities even in the most valuable forest areas. The barn’s owner, a university teacher, has been studying these debates as part of his academic work, but even he spends his weekends raising sheep and drying hay for his animals and those of other farmers.

The barn’s renovation for recreational housing had been begun by preceding generations of his family, but their alterations involved the use of modern building materials and various decorative elements that did not reflect his own view of the world. The first task of the architects from the Byró studio was thus to smooth over various fresh and recently paid-for “improvements”.

A renovation using found wood

Among other things, they sacrificed the new dormers and rooftop waterproofing membrane. Even so, the economically and environmentally minded architects Tomáš Hanus and Jiří Holub were not inclined to throw away everything that had not worked out. More than a few things were fixed by an unobtrusive coat of white paint on the façade and the use of wood cladding. The inside of the barn was piled high with things, and much of the renovation could be financed by selling them online. In the process, the architects came across a pile of wooden planks, which they took to the nearby sawmill to be cut into narrow slats that subsequently formed an important element in the new interior layout.