Facha Architekti Clads Former Pigsty Home in Red Corrugated Metal

Prague-based Facha Architekti has completed House With a Red Addition, a 26-metre red corrugated-metal extension to a family home in the Příbram region of the Czech Republic that was originally a single-storey pigsty.

The building had passed through several iterations before becoming a permanent home. Rather than "erase this history", the studio stated, the architects wanted the extension to be "deliberately distinct" from the main house.

The house occupies a 515-square-metre plot on the edge of a small village, set among a loose pattern of detached houses and former agricultural buildings.

What does the extension add?

The 26-metre volume enlarges the family's living space and strengthens the building's connection to the outdoors. It delivers:

• Seating steps facing the garden
• A larch terrace
• A colour-matched retractable textile awning

Externally, the design emphasises the addition's contemporary character. Inside, the team worked in the opposite direction, aiming to integrate the new space with the existing home into one cohesive living area.

"The pine plywood therefore transitions from wall lining into built-in furniture, tying the different elements of the interior together," Facha Architekti architect Matěj Nepustil told Dezeen.

Pine cladding covers stairs, walls, ceiling and built-in furniture throughout the interior. The custom furniture also solves a long-standing shortage of storage, now concealed within the joinery and designed to merge into the pine-clad surfaces.

"This allows the storage and wall surfaces to read as one continuous element rather than as separate pieces of furniture," said Nepustil.

Why red?

Red carries over from the corrugated-metal facade as the dominant accent colour inside the home. It appears on:

• Countertops
• Cupboard inlays
• Bannisters
• Two dining chairs

These accents counterpoint an otherwise neutral palette of pine-plywood cladding, natural-linoleum flooring and structural-timber beams.

The colour choice, Nepustil explained, was pragmatic rather than symbolic. "The red did not have any predetermined symbolic meaning, but emerged from the limited standard colour range available for the corrugated metal cladding," he said.

"It felt like the strongest choice to us, while also emphasising the clear distinction between the new addition and the original house."

How did the project rework the house?

The architects moved the home's main entrance into the extension. This allowed them to restructure the original layout and enlarge the bathroom to match the family's growing needs.

"It also gave us a more generous entrance area in the new extension, replacing the very cramped one in the original house," added Nepustil.

The project joins a run of Czech residential conversions and experiments recently featured on Dezeen, including a former-pigsty holiday home by Lenka Mílerová Architektka and a modular home with steel cladding by Papundekl Architects. Photography of House With a Red Addition is by Peter Fabo.

The conversion points to a broader pattern in the Czech Republic: agricultural leftovers such as pigsties, cheap and widely available in village centres, are proving a testing ground for studios negotiating how new architecture can sit beside — rather than imitate — the rural building stock it inherits.