Kraffer Garden in Jindřichův Hradec reactivates an 18th-century Baroque walled garden and former nursery as a public horticultural landscape. The project couples a rigorous, historically derived geometric framework with contemporary ecological management and a precise architectural incision: a new access ramp and a low-edge building that consolidates production, retail, and studio functions along the original stone wall. Terraces, greenhouses, and stone retaining structures are rearticulated to host cultivation, education, and cultural use while maintaining the site’s insular character within the town.
Kraffer Garden Technical Information
- Architects: Matěj Šebek Architekti, Ateliér Za Mák
- Location: Pražská 1286, 377 01 Jindřichův Hradec, Czech Republic
- Gross Area: 80 m2 | 861 Sq. Ft.
- Project Years: 2021 – 2025
- Photographs: © Radek Úlehla
The architecture of the new extension strives above all to be understandable and consistent with its intended function. The house and garden were developed in constant dialogue: the garden shaping the house, and the house in turn shaping the garden.
– Matěj Šebek
Kraffer Garden Photographs
Site Palimpsest and Urban Context
The project operates as a careful reading of a palimpsest: an 18th-century walled Baroque garden that was later adapted into a nursery and then neglected. The surviving stone enclosure and terraced ground become the primary ordering devices, reasserting a clear framework without reconstructing lost formality. The garden’s topography and boundary conditions provide both structure and memory, determining how new interventions interact with the old fabric.
A formerly inward-looking compound is reoriented to the town by cutting a new passage through accreted sheds and greenhouses to form a public access ramp. This move turns a brownfield into a civic landscape while preserving the garden’s inward calm. The rediscovered geometry guides contemporary use, with orthogonal plots and terraces accommodating cultivation, gathering, and circulation in a legible plan that balances historical order with living, productive programs.
Landscape Framework and Ecological Strategy
A strict orthogonal framework, derived from historic terrain lines, is held in tension with deliberately “wild” planting. This contrast sustains habitat diversity within a readable spatial structure, allowing spontaneous ecologies to inhabit a formal grid. Paths and beds align with the terraces, while planting communities drift across them, softening edges and extending seasonal change as a design tool.
Water-sensitive design underpins the terraces. Natural stone retaining walls, south-facing greenhouses, and effective soil management shape microclimates that support propagation and display. Material reuse and lime-based finishes reduce embodied impacts and ease maintenance. The demonstration garden ties cultivation to public education, as seasonal production drives circulation patterns, event placement, and care regimes, making horticultural cycles visible and instructive.
Threshold Architecture: Cut, Ramp, and Green Roof
The key architectural act is a precise incision through a collage of warehouses and greenhouses, forming a concrete ramp that functions as the main promenade into the garden. A low linear extension consolidates edge functions for a flower shop and landscape studio while abutting the Baroque wall. This edge-building reads as infrastructure more than an object, clarifying the thresholds between the street, ramp, and terraces.
Structural clarity governs the intervention. A concrete plinth and the ramp set the datum for public movement. A monolithic lintel ties the new frame to the historic wall, resolving load paths while registering the junction of the two periods. Exposed beams and a clearly expressed cornice support an overhanging green roof that tempers the southern sun, expands the habitat, and collects water, making the roofscape part of the garden’s ecological apparatus.
Interior construction is lightweight and reversible. Plywood partitions and a uniform plywood ceiling sit against lime-washed masonry, with fragments of the original stonework left visible to maintain the legibility of layers. Ceramic block walls remain unplastered and whitewashed, allowing the texture of new and old to meet without mimicry. The result supports evolving uses while keeping the fabric’s chronology explicit.
House–Garden Reciprocity and Spatial Sequence
Architecture and landscape work in reciprocity around the wall, serving as a datum. The edge-building mediates between the street and the terraced fields, choreographing the entry from the urban edge to the cultivated interior. The ramp compresses and then releases movement into the larger garden rooms, establishing a sequence of thresholds that frame long views and orient the visitor within the orthogonal layout.
Spaces are calibrated for multiple temporalities. Daily production sits alongside seasonal events and informal leisure, supported by adaptable partitions and shaded exterior aprons beneath the roof overhang. The low profile of the addition aligns with greenhouse roofs and preserves sightlines across the terraces, keeping the historic silhouette intact while enabling contemporary programmatic density.
Kraffer Garden Plans
Kraffer Garden Image Gallery
About matěj šebek architekti
Matěj Šebek Architekti is a Prague-based architectural studio founded by Matěj Šebek. Operating across the Czech Republic, including South Bohemia, the studio prioritizes renovation over new construction and is recognized for its meticulous approach throughout all project phases. The practice values interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly with landscape architects, and explores a broad spectrum of architectural scales and program types, from detailed construction elements to large collective projects.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Landscape designers: Ateliér Za Mák (Michaela Zudová, Jan Makovička)
- Client: Krafferova zahrada
- Other contributors: Wooden windows by Truhlářství Fical; Metal doors by LS Testa
