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Last November, Kinfolk magazine contacted me to write an article about the Vila Volman, a restored functionalist mansion in the town of Čelákovice, 15kms east of Prague. I jumped at the chance. I love to write about architecture but don’t often get the chance, especially for such a high-quality, high-brow glossy like Kinfolk. There were just a couple of obstacles: I’d never heard of the Volman before and honestly didn’t know anything about it. And, oh yeah, they needed the text in around two week’s time. Zuzana Kadlečková, the curator at the Volman, was kind enough to offer me a tour of this amazing house at short notice and the rest thankfully fell into place. The magazine is now out on bookstore shelves and I’m free to share the article and show you what I wrote (I've included here my own photos of the house, but they don't hold a candle to Marina Denisova's photos taken for the Kinfolk article itself): 

At the Czech town of Čelákovice, a landmark modernist villa has reopened after years of neglect and long restoration. The Vila Volman, dream home of interwar industrialist Josef Volman, was not only representative of Czech functionalism but drew inspiration from daring aesthetic movements at the time that emphasized abstraction and surrealism. This lends a surprising, deeper dimension to the house’s appeal.