Skull Studio designed the Vanguard loft in Prague, Czech Republic, in 2023. This innovative space harmoniously blends industrial architecture with early 20th-century modernism. The open-plan layout includes a central living area, flexible movable walls, and an elevated gallery. A tribute to racing legend Eliška Junková influenced its design, incorporating modernism, futurism, and functionalism.

Interior Balances Industrial and Modernist Aesthetics

Skull Studio designed the Vanguard loft in Prague, Czech Republic, by balancing industrial and modernist aesthetics with references to motorsport icons. The interior pays homage to Czech racer Eliška Junková, once Bugatti’s ambassador in Ceylon, as well as the early 20th-century First Republic architecture of newly independent Czechoslovakia.

“The concept of ‘co-creation’ is central to understanding the allocation of spatial functions,” studio co-founder Lucie Malá Krausová said. She and her partner designed the loft with the Globetrotter character in mind, drawing on the theme of time and time-travel. “We wanted to create a relaxed everyday environment, balancing delicate matters of functionality, comfort and leisure, infused with the increasingly topical concern with time,” Krausová continued. “The selected combination of colours, materials and distinctive designs is half wonderfully nostalgic, half invigoratingly progressive.”

Open-Plan Layout Features Movable Walls and Curtains

The rectangular 258-square-metre loft is organised along a central axis – dividing the main space into cooking, eating and seating zones. A pink coffee books display and a geometric bookcase define the lounge. Here, formalities are left behind surrounded by a mixture of vintage furniture like Jean Michel Frank’s chairs and Eero Saarinen’s Womb-type armchairs with green mohair velvet covers. A massive window framed in stainless steel steps onto the terrace, fitted with outdoor furniture for summer relaxation and a set of abstract neon tubes that imitate the speed motion blur.