Adress: 616 00 Brno – Drnovicá u. a.
Part of the 1928 Exhibition of Contemporary Culture in Czech3oslovakia was the i Dům architectural exhibition in Žabovřesky, a district of Brno.
The then ‘Czechoslovakian Werkbund’ tasked leading architects with the design of 16 minimalist houses. The leitmotif was modern, individual living, affordable in particular for young families.
The estate consisted of two villas, four semi-detached houses and two rows of terraced houses. All were three- to four-storied and were rendered mainly in white. They had no cellars. Roofs were flat and intended as roof gardens.
As with the other Werkbund estates across Europe, progressive ideas were not easily received in Brno; the wider public did not understand this new architecture, particularly where innovations in the functional division of rooms were concerned.
Under the socialist government after WWII, the estate’s uses changed.
Today, ‘Colony’ Nový Dům epitomizes the efforts of Brno’s architectural community to keep pace with the main tendencies of modernist European architecture. There were other examples in the city: the 1930 Villa Tugendhat, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site); the many houses in the Masaryk district; and the prestigious administrative buildings in Brno’s centre.