The whole building thing is a loose discipline. A free discipline that has high demands on our discipline from its start. In 2019, we became the owners of the landfill. And we decided to approach this huge amount of waste in a different way than a pile of useless junk that deserves more than just to be taken uncompromisingly to the landfill. And you know the rules of a landfill? Nothing gets back out beyond its borders...
Rethink, Reuse, Refurbish, Repair, Repurpose,….
The concept of sustainability is not new. We try to achieve it in farmhouse renovation not only by choosing used components, but also by breathing life into old, rusty, unloved, broken things. It is this flexibility to reuse materials that is one of the key aspects of sustainability for us in Voděrádky. We have chosen the path of restoring and recycling the building materials of the urban ecosystem. We have preserved the original steel structure in the hall, we have used sewers, sumps, a well, we are paving with blocks we found on site, we are bringing back old solid wood, we are recycling polystyrene packaging, we have imported windows that would have ended up in the scrap yard.
Jan Hřebejk, a movie director, who delighted us with his visit in Voděrádky, said at a lecture: "Each of these things is actually ugly on its own, but together they all make a beautiful whole."
In life we tend towards minimalism, but in Voděrádky the weight of conscience falls on us. Architect Petr Hájek adds: "We create aesthetics by not aestheticizing. At the moment, recycling makes sense for us. It's like a coat. You get a hole in it, and if you get one patch on it, you can throw it away. If there are a thousand patches, you have a new coat."
That's right, we can't imagine it any other way. We simply can't do anything with this seemingly useless junk other than to fix it and reuse it. And so we patch and patch and patch. And we know that this coat will serve us for many years to come.
