Meanwhile, Somewhere In The Czech Republic…

I don’t recall where I ran across this originally, but in any case it had no context but certainly looked interesting.

I wish this had come with an exterior view, it might better explain what’s actually going on. Some elements are immediately recognizable (a certain reader will appreciate the inclusion of a grand piano in the scheme) like kitchen and bathrooms and bedrooms (zimmer is the only thing I can make out in any of these space). I ended up having GPT sharpen and increase the contrast of the originals to make them more legible, and even though I haven’t had the best of luck using this method in the past when the room labels are in English, it did just fine with the Deutsch.

My German is beyond rusty (I was fluent in at one point in my life, but sadly it’s all vanished from disuse), so I asked for translations on the words that weren’t immediately obvious to me. Since they all make sense in the context of the floor plan, I will assume that GPT got the sharpening right on these particular plans.

At first I thought the set of rooms behind the garage was an in-law suite, but it’s actually rooms for the male servant (Diener), not to be confused with the maid’s quarters (Mädchenzimmer).

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Why yes, yes I would!

My ignorance of this floor plan took me down a rabbit hole. When I was working with GPT, it kept referring to it as Villa Tugendhat. So I opened the Google machine and gave it a spin.

This house has history! It’s now a museum and even has an Instagram page!

Finding it answered the lingering question: how can the ground floor be under the floor with the garage? Because it’s on a slight hillside. It all makes sense now!

And the male servant isn’t just a servant, he’s the private chauffeur!

Chauffeur!

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ADDENDUM:

Thanks to reader Hsvrbl for supplying a link to a more complete set of plans!

This one provides the mechanical basement level as well as roof plans, elevations, and cross sections.

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