Personal Microcosm

After years of study­ing and work­ing in Lon­don and Paris, Michal Váha­la decid­ed to move back to the Czech Repub­lic and Prague was his obvi­ous des­ti­na­tion. He dis­cov­ered his dream home on the fourth floor in an apart­ment build­ing from the First Repub­lic in the mid­dle of Holešovice dis­trict. “I wished for a flat in the cen­tre of events and Prague 7 seemed ide­al. It is a pro­gres­sive and dynam­ic area, my office is near­by and there is so much going on. I was on a flat hunt for a rel­a­tive­ly long time, I want­ed an open space, some­thing unique and with a sto­ry as many of the new build­ings seem to be lack­ing char­ac­ter. And this flat had a poten­tial, which imme­di­ate­ly struck me,” Michal recalls.

No won­der, the pre­vi­ous own­ers already did quite a lot of work on the 54 square metres. They opened up the ground plans and cre­at­ed a num­ber of clev­er­ly hid­den stor­age spaces. The ren­o­va­tion was done with­out a fear of change, which proves for exam­ple an ele­vat­ed plat­form by the kitchen win­dow, where Michal placed his din­ing table. In an instant, this became his favourite spot for read­ing, din­ing and work.

Fur­ther rad­i­cal changes of the flat were not nec­es­sary, its new mas­ter sim­ply changed the fur­ni­ture, paint­ed the walls in petro­le­um green and replaced the lights. “I enjoy active­ly work­ing with light, it can­not be too lit­tle or too much. When I need to focus, I pre­fer stronger white light­ing, how­ev­er, I enjoy the warm and less intense light from many small­er sources much more, it helps me cre­ate a pleas­ant atmosphere.”

Fol­low­ing this phi­los­o­phy he illu­mi­nat­ed the liv­ing room with Spacey chan­de­lier from the design­er Lukáš Novák. “Spacey has an organ­ic struc­ture and per­fect­ly com­ple­ments the dark wood with colour. In a way, my flat is like a mod­ern chalet in the city, a small sanc­tu­ary, and this soli­taire is its jewel.”

Michal also fell in love with a table lamp from the same col­lec­tion, which moves around the flat like a plan­et in its orbit. The rest is tak­en care of by nature her­self. Win­dows face both east and west – the sun wakes up in the flat, its beams togeth­er with the Czech crys­tal make joy­ful reflec­tions cre­at­ing a play of shad­ows on the walls and toward the evening it slow­ly dis­ap­pears on the horizon.