The owners of the small pension succeeded in purchasing the neighbouring building of an old family house of the countryside type. The commission involved designing and realization of the café with the bar “in the modern spirit” over an extremely short time and without the possibility of radical construction adaptations to the already reconstructed building.
The bar counter is situated at the front of the space providing the finest view of the area. The steel structure of the bar counter is clad with chipboard panels sealed and treated with paint. Some of the appliances are inserted under the bar and some of them are integrated into the side wall. The niches of the front wall serve for displaying both the drinks and glasses. The niches are illuminated with yellow neon lights, which carve up the black part of the interior like lasers. The high reflections make the space seem larger. This feeling is amplified through the use of transparent chairs, which lighten the space. The shape of the chairs is partially suppressed by the amount of reflections and glare from the various light sources. The black epoxy floor seems to completely swallow the bar in the glare and blends into the wall. The colour of the wall changes gradually from black through yellow-golden stucco to the white of the sculpted drop ceiling. The primary function of the drop ceiling is to visually suppress the oddly rising piece of concrete staircase, which sticks out into the space, and to cover up the air-conditioning technology. At the same time the elaborate ceiling is meant to compensate for the missing view of the landscape or street with a view of "something interesting" in the interior, and last but not least also to dampen the acoustics of the space.
The drop ceiling was designed with the method of “parametric design”. This is the first implementation of “digital architecture” in the Czech Republic. Due to the technical and financial demands of the design, the organic form is designed from individual linear elements. The resulting curves are assembled from these components and creates a free-flowing surface. When the observer's perspective of the structure changes so does its density or porousness too. The surface of the true ceiling above the suspended ceiling gradually opens up and closes depending on the angle at which it is viewed.
The basic consideration behind the parametric design was to create an instrument which would not only serve to seek a shape and its testing in visualizations, but which would serve for the actual realization as well. This instrument is an „parametric digital object“ which enables changes of his several parameters like: density and cross-section of linear components, number of control curves, radius of control curves, their rotation atc. Parametric instrument enables morphology changes of the free-flowing surface based on the aesthetic demands.of the architect and the functional demands of other professions (static, air-conditioning, lighting..) For this purpose we have developed a universal instrument with the name “Wooden Waves” making this approach possible. It was created as a GDL – Geometric Description Language element which is part of ArchiCAD software. The main part of this instrument is active database of all components which are used in structure. Each part has its unique marking, which includes all parametric information. When parameters change, the digital database is immediately updated. This list of components serves for production and can be interpreted in many ways: Digital data can be sent into CAD/CAM machine or in other case it can be printed drawings. We have printed list of all components (about 450). Due to high cost of CAD/CAM machine we have printed drawings in scale 1:1 which serve for adjusting of right angle of each component.
To create the parametric instrument is quite time-consuming, but it has major benefits during form finding and it also enables to react very promptly to each required change during design process. It would be impossible to construct this project without the digital access. Assemblage of drop ceiling took only one week
