The overall winner of this year’s Interior of the Year award: the renovation of a house in Kutná Hora. Photo: Alex Shoots Buildings.
“The house in Kutná Hora is the kind of renovation that doesn’t immediately grab your attention with a single magazine-cover-worthy room, but rather one you have to explore step by step to appreciate the overall concept, the flow of the spaces, the use of light, and the materials and textures—which here and there take on a subtly decorative function. It’s exactly the kind of carefully thought-out house where you’d probably want to walk in, put your toothbrush away in the bathroom, and start living there right away,” says Petr Tschakert, founder and director of the competition.
The original medieval house in the heart of Kutná Hora burned down completely and was replaced by a 19th-century building, which underwent an extensive but insensitive renovation in the 1970s. When the architects were commissioned to carry out a complete renovation, the house had lost all traces of its original identity. The architects’ main goal, therefore, was to rediscover the house’s memory and its original layers—of which there were not many.
Statement by the International Jury
“The international jury praised the sensitive integration of new elements into the original structures, the thoughtful use of light and color, and the consistent approach to both the interior and exterior. Among other things, it highlighted the use of lacquered plywood, which runs throughout the house, as well as the restraint and uniformity of most surface materials and the refined use of decorative textures, such as grooving.”
The overall winner of this year’s Interior of the Year, the renovation of a house in Kutná Hora. Photo: Alex Shoots Buildings.
Traditionally, a different personality designs the awards for the finalists and the overall winner of the Interior of the Year competition each year. These are always original works that express the designer’s specific perspective on the theme of interior design. In the ninth edition of the awards, this role was taken on by Kateřina Handlová, the artistic director of the Rückl glassworks and a designer. In creating the awards’ design, she built on the work of previous years’ designers, including Rony Plesl, Václav Mlynář, Boris Klimek, Jakub Pollág, Michaela Tomišková, and Jakub Janďourek.
In accordance with the rules, all competing interiors must have been completed in the previous year. Over the course of nine editions, the awards have thus become, de facto, a kind of regular study of the development and state of interiors in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, always for the given year. Thanks to this, it serves as a powerful source of inspiration for the general public. Since the Interior of the Year award was established, 1,640 interiors have been submitted.
Winner in the Private Interior – New Construction category: Garden Villa near Prague by Atelier Kunc Architects. Photo: Peter Fabo.
The expert jury, led by the emeritus rector of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague—architect and designer Prof. Acad. Arch. Jiří Pelcl, Dr. h.c.—selected from among 233 interiors by Czech and Slovak architects and interior designers, the highest number in the competition’s history.
The international expert jury included, for example, Ilja Skoček, a member of the board of the Slovak Chamber of Architects; architect and designer Barbora Škorpilová; Italian interior designer Danile Daminelli; Danish architect Rasmus Kruse Jensen; Italian architect Daniela Colli; Greek interior designer Vangelis Bonios; and many others. In addition to architects and interior designers, the jury also included Czech figures with exceptional achievements in the field of visual culture, such as film director and producer Hana Třeštíková, designer Jakub Pollág, visual artist Pasta Oner, and others. The jury’s interdisciplinary diversity is intentional. It aims to ensure that the results more fully reflect interior design as a multidisciplinary field, rather than merely an architectural one.
This year also marked the first time the International Media Award was presented; the winners were selected by a number of representatives from leading magazines and online publications across several European Union countries, some of whom personally presented the award in this category.
