With its traditionalist conception, the house of the Lieutenant-Colonel and Russian legionnaire Augustin Fritz, the realisation of which was prolonged for almost ten years because of war events, differs significantly in style from the work of the leading representative of Moravian functionalism. It is as if here Lubomír Šlapeta has here completed the tendencies, on the one hand the organic and on the other hand the rustic “heavy” ones, observed in his selected and less well-known projects. The Fric house impressed a substantial part of the local clientele with its romantic form and was soon popularly modified by the architects of the town.
The original project from 1939 was conceived with regard to the townʼs building plan from 1928, which was still valid at that time. In 1946 it was replaced by the Pledge Adjustment Plan of the town of Hranice by the Brno architect Bohumil Babánek, where the extensive land holdings of the Fric family on the Bílý kámen (‘White Rockʼ) slope were laid out in a spa zone. The most suitable site was chosen and in 1947 Šlapeta presented a new design; the location outside the town in the immediate vicinity of the spa led the architect to a distinctly romantic concept. The result was a ground-floor villa house that followed folk architecture but was based on the heritage of functionalism, which is manifested here especially in the layout.
In connection with this house, Tomáš Pospěch talks about traditionalism in architecture, a concept commonly associated with the Czech literature of the 1930s. A hipped roof with a large living attic, the rounded shape of the dormer, an entrance arch leading to a column, rough plaster and above all the emphasis on colour solutions, such as the sandy yellow colour of the façade, create a romantic character. This was further strengthened in 1977, when Šlapeta additionally designed a terrace and a stone backrest.
Šlapeta combined the living room with the dining room into an L-shaped space with a corner fireplace connecting the two rooms. This allowed views of each othr through the living areas, as well as to the garden and views through the windows of the town of Hranice, lying in the valley on three sides.
Houses with noticeable rustic tendencies, which were much closer to the small-town environment and the spirit of the local clientele, represented a common and popular alternative to the functionalist white cubes. With the rise to power of fascism, both the investor and the designer suspected that it would be easier to get a building permit for a traditional roof than for a straight roof, a symbol of the soon-to-be-forbidden international modernist movement.
The extraordinary popularity of the rustic house is evidenced by the production of local builders from the 1950s and 1960s, in which various variants or copies of Fritzʼs villa have numerous representations. Posledním příspěvkem do této série se stal dům Ladislava Zely opět Pod Bílým kamenem z druhé poloviny 60. let. The last contribution to this series was Ladislav Zelaʼs house, again in Pod Bílým kamenem (‘Below the White Rockʼ) from the second half of the 1960s. However, most of these builders violated the original proportions of the house, neglected the sensitive relationship to the terrain, had individual details and the colour of the plaster changed, and simplified the overall concept in order to meet their own practical needs.
The house of Augustin Fric has been a listed building since 1995 as one of a valuable set of designs by Lubomír Šlapeta realised in Moravia.
LJ (translation by SG)
Selected literature
Tomáš Pospěch, Hranice, Teplice nad Bečvou a okolí. Architektura 1815–2018, Hranice 2018, pp. 162–163.
Petr Pelčák – Vladimír Šlapeta – Pavel Zatloukal et al., Lubomír Šlapeta 1908–1983, Čestmír Šlapeta 1908–1999: architektonické dílo (kat. výstavy), Muzeum umění Olomouc – Spolek Obecní dům Brno 2003.
Tomáš Pospěch, Hranická architektura 1815–1948, Hranice 2000.
Tomáš Pospěch, Šlapetova pozdně ruralistická vila v Hranicích, Prostor Zlín, 1999, č. 4, 5, 6, pp. 57–59.
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