Abstract
The book is concerned with the houses in Voyvodovo, a Czech village in North-West Bulgaria, founded in 1900 mostly by Czech speaking Protestants from the village Svata Helena in what is today Romanian Banat. The authors deal with the original Voyvodovo houses built by the settlers from Svata Helena that are distinguished from the architecture that was common in this region and labelled as "Czech houses" by the villagers even today.
The Voyvodovo "Czech house" is analysed from the architectonic and technical perspectives, as well as from that of culture and social relations. Attention is also paid to the development of the "Czech house" in the context of the rural colonial architecture in South-East Europe.
The roots of Voyvodovo folk architecture should be looked for not only in the character of the houses, but also in the urbanism of the village. The plan of the village displays traits typical of the colonial villages in Banat.
The processes of colonization of Banat in the 18th and 19th centuries influenced the architectonic style and the building culture of the whole region. The influence of "ethnic" traditions on the character of the settlers' villages in Banat was to a large extent suppressed by the fact that they were systematically planned.
Voyvodovo represented (and partly still represents) a compact architecture complex that illustrates the character of the colonial villages in South-East Europe. Voyvodovo houses, albeit built in the 20th century, are an interesting illustration of the village architecture of the 19th century.
The fact that the ascendants of the Voyvodovo villagers came from the Czech lands did not have any fundamental impact on the form of Voyvodovo houses as similar houses were built in Banat by people of other ethnicities. Voyvodovo does however display a certain (but not dominant) influence of the building traditions of Svata Helena.