Open and shut case: a pavilion in a suburban Prague garden shows ingenuity in planning and construction, and a delicate sensibility to the properties of materials, particularly wood.

In the long garden in Mukarov, a southern suburb of Prague, is a new little wooden building that is in many ways a masterpiece of compression and flexibility.

Rectangular, its long sides face north and south, both of which elevations are largely imperforate, while the east and west sides are mainly glass, offering fine long vistas of the well-grown existing garden. (A predominantly south-facing house would have looked point-blank at the garden's boundary hedge.) East, west and south sides have covered terraces. The most generous, on the east side, has a long slot in both deck and roof so that a tree and other plants can be grown through it. Structure is timber, with spruce board cladding. Waterproof ply covers the south side while, on the north elevation, the zinc roof covering (still shining) is drawn down over the wall.

The most dramatic move in the little building is a large pivoted partition towards the west end of the plan. With it open and orientated east-west, almost the whole space is thrown together as a spruce-lined studio cavern, with the kitchen separated to the south. When the partition is orientated north-south, the western end of the house becomes a living room with the kitchen built in, and a separate bedroom to the east.

In both cases, the multi-optional storage wall -- formed, like the south elevation and the swinging partition, of bluish-grey marine plywood -- defines the spaces and even contains the retractable bed. The building has been a temporary family dwelling, used until the main house is finished. After that, it is to be a studio. Its architect Ivan Kroupa says experience shows that it works perfectly well as a place in which two people can live permanently. M.F.

Architect

Ivan Kroupa/Radka Exnerova, Prague

Photographs

Arne Valen, 1, 6, 7

Matteo Piazza, 2, 3, 4, 5,