Piškot parked in the Krkonoše mountains

Piškot is a minimal mobile information stand that can be used by the KRNAP Administration for information services and facilities high in the mountains. It replaced the original kiosk in Zlaté návrší near Vrbtova bouda, which was destroyed by a woodworm. It will be there until a permanent information centre is built.

The students started working on the kiosk designs in July 2019 during the summer school of building organized by the Seho-Poláček studio. The construction was carried out directly in the Krkonoše Mountains, on the premises of the KRNAP Administration's wood production facility in Mladé Buky, where professional craftsmen assisted to them. "It was a real holiday experience. The KRNAP administration accommodated the students at Pomezní boudy, and they were able to concentrate on the project," says architect and teacher Hana Seho from the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University.

Design-build projects, in which students implement their designs, are an alternative to standard teaching at the Faculty of Architecture CTU. They teach students to think about the ecological and economic aspects of a project or to understand the properties of the materials used. "The biggest challenge during construction was the first column. We spent two days straightening the edges on the grid, grinding them so that the first column was set up correctly vertically. The unevenness would then show in the roof," recalls Veronika Suchá, who together with Jan Kahránek is the author of Piškot.

For their construction they invented a structure they refer to as a membrane. Its shape is defined by the curve of the floor and consists of wooden slats joined together in a smooth curve. The small elements of the slats rotate thanks to the tongue-and-groove connection to form an arc. The students had to make a 1 : 1 model to check how large a radius the curve could have. A structural engineer corrected the final shape of the structure.

Part of the perimeter wall is full, there is a small storage hidden behind it and a chemical toilet can be placed here. A part of the membrane is made of glass, with a view to the Kozí hřbety (Goat Ridges). All the wooden elements of the structure and the shell are made of larch wood, which can withstand mountain climatic conditions without painting or further maintenance. The concept takes into account that over time the wood will begin to turn grey and get lost in the surroundings.

The interior of the kiosk is made entirely of foiled concrete plywood, the plywood is non-slip on the floor and smooth on the ceiling and furniture. The custom-designed interior of the information kiosk was produced at the Higher Vocational School and Secondary Industrial School in Volyně, with which the faculty has long cooperated.

The building stands on a chassis consisting of a two-way grid of lightened I-profiles. At the four points where the structure is connected to the ground, the grid is reinforced and four steel lugs are welded to it. During transport, a crane rope is hooked onto these and the entire kiosk is lifted and loaded onto the truck.

Piškot is the latest result of the cooperation between the Deparment of Architectural Design II of the Faculty of Architecture of the CTU and the KRNAP Administration. In the past, it resulted in footbridges and shelters implemented in 2018 and 2019.

Student team: Jan Kahránek and Veronika Suchá (authors of the concept), Štěpán Beneš, Lukáš Foltýn, Pavel Halgaš, Markéta Chocová, Štěpánka Poučová, Dominik Rejthar, and Pavel Vondrýska

Pedagogical leadership: doc. Ing. arch. Hana Seho, MgA. Jan Světlík