Set beneath the White Carpathians, where forest meets meadow, Janošík Headquarters and Showroom recasts a 1950s grain hall as a landscape-oriented workplace and testing ground for apertures. The project couples a reduced gabled volume with a cast-in-place concrete addition that opens the hall to long views and the garden, utilizing the building envelope as both a mediator of climate and an instrument for spatial experiments with windows, doors, and sliding glass walls.
Janošík Headquarters and Showroom Technical Information
- Architects: Jakub Janošík
- Location: Valašské Příkazy 81, Czech Republic
- Gross Area: 2,100 m2 | 22,604 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2017 – 2025
- Photographs: © Filip Beránek
Industrial halls often appear as scars in the landscape. Here, the intention was to reconstruct at this scale in a way that connects with the landscape without disturbing its forces and tranquility.
– Jakub Janošík
Janošík Headquarters and Showroom Photographs
Contextual Transformation: Reframing a 1950s Hall as a Landscape Link
The project begins with the adaptive reuse of a 15 × 70 m cooperative hall, once a closed grain warehouse oriented to logistics rather than landscape. The retained gabled shell is pared down to essential lines, against which a new concrete “embrace” draws the meadow up to the building and opens the interior to long views. From offices set approximately five meters above grade, occupants step directly into the terrain, collapsing the typical separation between industrial floor and ground plane.
On three sides, the mass reads as a restrained monument, a dark and compact object at the forest edge. Toward the meadow, it resolves into a low horizontal line with four deep cut-outs that modulate exposure and shade. External insulation keeps the existing steel frame legible inside, while black-painted larch cladding subdues the volume in the landscape and clarifies the dialogue between old gable and new concrete armature.
Large singular openings calibrate the building’s civic presence and orientation. A 9 × 3.2 m gable aperture addresses arrival as a public-scaled lens, while a deliberately small window on the opposite end tightens focus and scales the long volume. The resulting figure is less an object in a field than a hinge that converts a formerly defensive envelope into a link between working interiors and the meadow continuum.
Envelope as Mediator: Apertures, Loggias, and Thermal Logic
Openings are used as spatial instruments rather than mere display surfaces. Recessed loggias thicken the façade, providing direct outdoor access for each office, which extends south into terraces and a garden. Their depth and orientation temper summer sun, while overhangs and careful sizing of apertures balance winter gains and glare. The envelope thus performs as a sequence of thresholds with varying air, light, and acoustic conditions rather than a single planar separation.
Passive strategies are prioritized over mechanical conditioning. The reuse of the hall, added insulation, and selective window replacement reduce the baseline demand. The southern low-angle sun contributes to winter warming, with shading geometry and loggia depth limiting summer overheating. Underfloor cooling serves as a backup for hot days, and flush-mounted roof photovoltaics seamlessly integrate energy production into the building’s black volume, eliminating visual clutter.
The building serves as a laboratory for exploring door and window typologies, situating technical variations within a coherent environmental logic. Large sliding panes, pivot doors, and a retractable seating window that withdraws glass to place users in the garden all test the edge between enclosure and exposure. These experiments are legible to occupants as changes in threshold thickness, handle dynamics, view framing, and airflow, tying product performance to spatial experience.
Interior Organization: A Linear Hall Recast as Commons and Edge Rooms
Inside, the long plan is reinterpreted as a central commons flanked by focused rooms. A broad linear corridor operates as an internal square, terminating in a sliding glass wall that extends daily life into the meadow. Its openness supports display, informal gathering, and the reading of structure, while preserving clear sightlines that connect the depth of the hall to the landscape beyond.
Enclosed offices and meeting rooms occupy the perimeter for acoustic control, each paired with a loggia or terrace to maintain direct access to the outdoors. Custom furnishings remain deliberately understated, keeping attention on the cadence of light, the hierarchy of volumes, and the calibrated proportions of openings. The plan, therefore, balances the predictability required for work with spatial episodes that register weather, season, and time of day.
Arrival is marked by a 12 m-high entrance volume, approximately 12 × 15 m in size, where a stair-object doubles as an amphitheater. This stepped timber mass organizes movement, offers tiered seating for collective use, and frames the large gable opening as a fixed view of the White Carpathians. The piece transforms the entry into a civic space within the building, clarifying the section and choreographing the ascent without competing with the simplicity of the hall.
Material Tectonics and Cultural Layers
Material restraint amplifies the presence of the surrounding terrain. The hall is wrapped in black-painted larch that shows grain without reflectivity, while the new concrete is tinted in a sandstone hue and poured in layers to read as stratified ground rather than smooth infrastructure. White interiors serve as a gallery for landscape, moderated by bleached spruce, natural oak, dark gray concrete, and linen that soften acoustics and articulate touchpoints.
Three crafted interventions extend the dialogue between structure, atmosphere, and place. The sculptural stair, crafted from solid timber, evokes the silhouettes of the White Carpathians and serves as a communal amphitheater. A cycle of site-specific paintings by Lukáš Musil introduces a temporal register through pigment that bleeds from the reverse side of the canvas, lending depth without surface bravura. Textured glass lighting and door infill translate the rawness of construction into a tactile, light-bearing surface that diffuses illumination and preserves privacy.
The garden advances the project’s environmental and cultural continuity. Meadow planting and an orchard of apple, plum, and cherry trees capture regional ecologies, while low pines and hardy shrubs on the concrete extension blend built form with slope and sky. Rather than a decorative perimeter, the planting matrix holds the building in a working landscape, aligning daily routines with seasonal cycles and the slower time of growth.
Janošík Headquarters and Showroom Plans
Janošík Headquarters and Showroom Image Gallery
About Jakub Janošík
Based in the Czech Republic, Jakub Janošík leads the design and artistic direction of his family’s firm, JANOŠÍK OKNA-DVEŘE, which specializes in creating windows and doors for contemporary architecture. Though not formally trained as an architect, Janošík’s deep engagement with architectural design emerged from global travels, an appreciation for expressive yet environmentally considerate structures, and a commitment to integrating built form with the natural landscape. Since the firm’s inception, his vision has driven a reflective exploration of architecture that is both culturally resonant and in dialogue with its surroundings.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Client: JANOŠÍK OKNA-DVEŘE
- Other contributors: Hill’s sculpture by Maxim Velčovský
- Other contributors: Through Landscape paintings by Lukáš Musil
- Other contributors: Holt lights and glass objects by DECHEM Studio
- Video overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fraSmoC3P4
