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National Bank of Tblisi. Image with thanks to @vas

National Bank of Tblisi. Image with thanks to @vasilmann

House Van Wassenhove 1970-74, architect Juliaan La

House Van Wassenhove 1970-74, architect Juliaan Lampens.

Amongst the best known of the 35 residencies Laampens designed is this 1972 home for the teacher, Albert Van Wassenhove in Sint-Martens-Latem just outside Ghent. The house is profoundly brutalist yet at the same time perfectly suited to the wooded area which surrounds it. It is composed of one large open space composed over several levels – within the space is a ‘sleeping circle.’ After the death of the owner, the house was passed to Ghent University who in turn handed it into the care of the Dhondt-Dhaenens Museum. In 2015 the Van Wassenhove House was restored and architecture fans can now arrange to stay overnight and experience the very special qualities of the design.

Image ©Juliaan Lampens, House Van Wassenhove, 1970-74 Courtesy Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium Photo: Rik Vannevel

When Prague lawyer JUDr. Josef Winternitz commissi

When Prague lawyer JUDr. Josef Winternitz commissioned Adolf Loos and Karel Lhota to design and build Villa Winternitz in 1931 he will have been aware of the threatening extremes off European politics but could not have imagined the manner in which his family would be driven from their home. Nor the battle to return the villa to its owners.

Josef did not survive to see the villa recognised as one of the most important interwar years homes in Prague and Loos’ last project, completed in a year with construction overseen by Karel Lhota.

On 15th March 1939, Hitler’s troops marched into Prague, making life for the city’s Jewish population terrifying and dangerous. Josef and his wife Jenny and their children Suzana and Petr were forcibly evicted in 1941, their home confiscated and transferred to the Emigration Fund for Bohemia and Moravia an officially organized looting operation. The villa became the property of the city. The family remained elsewhere in Prague until 1943 when they were sent to Theresienstadt and then on to Auschwitz.

Josef and Petr didn’t survive, Jenny and Suzana did. Liberated they returned to Prague. Penniless, mother and daughter technically reclaimed their home in 1948 only to be landed with ‘inheritance and millionaire tax’, ‘payment of which was conditional on the return of the villa’. The state knew that refugees would never be able to raise the funds; now they were liable for ‘discovered costs’. Jenny and Suzana pawns in a situation. The deal agreed in 1956 left the state in control of the Villa ‘in return for the cancellation of foreclosures and other claims arising from the fight to return the property’. The local municipality repurposed the villa as a kindergarten.The communist system ensured that they could never reclaim their home. Jenny died before the collapse of communism.

In 1997 after years of litigation between the family and the municipality the villa returned to the family. Their grandson Stanislav Cysar and other family members came together in 1999 to restore it to former glory. Anyone who has looked at property restitution will know this is a rare outcome across Europe. Image Villa Winternitz ©

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