Walter Stein’s Villa

Unlike his father and brother, architect Jan Rejchl did not design many family houses. The few exceptions include Walter Stein’s villa. Walter Stein was the director of Hugo a Gustav Stein, a woodworking company operating a sawmill in Plotiště nad Labem, logging in forests near Hradec Králové, and later also operating sawmills in Borová, Nové Město na Moravě, and Šošůvka near Blansko. Walter Stein formally took over the company in 1935 after his father Hugo died.

In 1932, Stein’s villa was designed in the oldest residential area of Hradec Králové, on Orlické nábřeží Embankment by Jan Rejchl. Thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of Václav Rejchl, Rejchl’s family owned a number of building plots, including the future construction site of Stein’s villa. The owner did not have a clear idea of the villa. However, the Jan Rejchl’s estate and the archives of the local Building Authority include a number of variations of the villa, from a strictly traditionalist design featuring a gabled roof to avant-garde designs in the style of progressive functionalism reflecting the contemporary Baba settlement in Prague. Eventually, Rejchl went for the middle course. The very simple flat façade facing the garden features a horizontal line created by a long balcony on the mezzanine floor and a shorter balcony on the first floor. The façade facing the street was more vertical due to the combination of several cubes unified by the central line of the staircase avant-corps featuring a three-part strip of glass block windows. In one of the avant-garde versions of the project, Rejchl designed the interior living space on the ground floor as a compact living room with optically divided functional zones, similar to the flowing space conceived by Le Corbusier. The more traditional requirements of the owner eventually led Rejchl to divide the living space into several rooms. Upstairs, there were private rooms with a bathroom. The villa has been recently rebuilt, and its original layout and avant-garde ethos has been almost lost. 

LZL