Laki László Kornél - Luxury Home Architect

Architect László Kornél Laki designs intelligent heating film into his luxury family houses, as underfloor or ceiling heating. In the 2020 interview he said that the system can be controlled room by room, that a stronger film placed in front of large glass windows prevents misting, and that started from a phone it quickly gives warmth - and that he himself prefers heating from below.

The architect

László Kornél Laki originally trained as an economist. He began his architecture career - by his account, fulfilling one of his mother's dreams - at the age of 30; at that time he had a real-estate company, and he felt he could design better houses than the ones he was selling. He studied modern architecture in France, and by his own account he is an award-winning architect of the French Jacques Rougerie Foundation: in the foundation's competition he won an award with a design he calls the "butterfly house".

He describes his style as rebellious and maximalist: he designs minimalist yet human-scale houses that connect residents with nature, while the choice of plot and special shading protect their privacy. He often starts work without a client: he imagines a house for a given plot, develops several versions up to a realistic visualisation, and only then looks for the builder for it. "I don't want cookie-cutter houses," he said.

A brick house with environmentally conscious building services

His clients often ask why the luxury houses he designs have a conventional structure. At the time of the interview he had been saying for 18 years that a house must be built from brick - in the Buda region, for earthquake safety, supplemented with reinforced-concrete columns. The house he represents is built from climate brick and is heated and cooled by an environmentally conscious system; he only takes on designing such houses.

What heating does he plan for a luxury family house?

They equip their houses with intelligent heating film, as underfloor or ceiling heating. He first came across the technology more than 10 years before the interview, while still abroad: because of an illness he tried to run his house at the time with this heating, and found the system very comfortable and, controlled as a smart house, easy to operate.

In his experience, at the start clients try out what temperature they would like in which room, and afterwards change it by a few degrees at most when they leave home. In his view, room-by-room control could be achieved with a conventional heating system only with great complexity and considerable expense, and even then not with this comfort.

Heating under the shower, the bed and the windows

In the bathroom he plans heating under the shower and under the bathtub too, and recommends this to everyone who uses such a system. For one client they built a bed from aerated-concrete blocks (Ytong); heating film also went under the wooden structure made by the carpenter and under the mattress, so that even in a bedroom set to cool the bed is not cold. According to the client's feedback, this worked out very well. In most of his houses there is also a cushioned window seat at the windows - heating film was put there as well.

In front of large glass windows they generally lay a stronger heating film, so the windows do not mist up. According to the architect, it is especially useful that the system senses not only the air temperature but also the floor temperature, and both can be set: some people like to feel the warmth from the floor, and some want only an even air temperature. In his own living room, when heating up he enjoys the warmth of the floor, then switches the system over so that it holds the temperature invisibly in the background.

Heating from below - and the question of joints

He chooses ceiling heating in a family house only if the floor covering requires it; he prefers to heat houses from below. A common objection is that underfloor heating is bad for the joints. To this he replied: with early water-based underfloor heating, copper pipes coiled into the floor at wide spacing were heated with 60-70 degree water, and that temperature really was hard to bear; later 30-40 degree water went into plastic pipes. A heating film system heats at every point of the surface, heats the house quickly, and by his account he has not received feedback about a single failure from clients.

He saw the difference in his own family too: his young son much preferred playing on the floor in the house with heating film than with a conventional water heating system. The comfort difference between intelligent infrared heating and a water-based system is hard to put into words, he said - and at the time of the interview he had not designed gas heating into his houses for 14 years. He also finds that since heating film was installed in his house, objects - the sofa set or the glass table - are not cold to the touch either, because radiant heating does not only warm the air.

Solar panels and environmental awareness

The office plans solar panels for every house. The house's heating demand - taking the family's habits and other consumers into account - is calculated by an electrical engineer, and the solar system is sized to that with roughly a 10% margin. According to the architect, the point of this is not financial saving - the monthly heating cost matters less to his clients - but that a house open to nature with a lot of glass should not burden the environment with fossil energy.

Anyone calculating with solar panels today should base it on the current billing rules. In Hungary since 1 January 2024, gross billing applies to new household solar systems: electricity fed into the grid and electricity drawn are accounted for separately. Net metering can remain only for systems applied for by September 2023 and put into operation by 1 January 2026 at the latest, for a maximum of 10 years. Solar panels can still reduce the electricity cost of heating, but with winter heating you have to reckon with the fact that generation is lowest just when heat demand is greatest.

According to his clients' feedback, the system is not only comfortable but practical: after landing, they start the heating by phone, and when they arrive home, the temperature they set welcomes them in every room.

Infrared panel, ceiling heating, heating film: the architect's comparison

At the time of the interview (2020) he was talking about their houses heated with 3rd-generation heating film; today we install 4th-generation heating film. He had earlier heated his own house with an infrared panel system: he first tried it in the bedroom, then in the living room, and finally heated the whole house with infrared panels. The ceiling-mounted panel - ceiling heating - was too direct for him at a low ceiling height, especially above the bed, even though the room as a whole warmed up pleasantly. On a side wall he found the panel more pleasant; placed behind plasterboard it heated noticeably, with worse efficiency.

Compared with a radiator, he found that the surroundings of a radiator are very hot within roughly 1 metre, and gradually cooler as you move away, whereas an infrared panel is noticeably warm near it and then heats the room evenly: even in the far part of the room the temperature was the same as three metres from the panel. Heating with infrared panels he missed solar panels, because he felt on the heating bill that a cost-reducing system was needed alongside.

With heating film built into an underfloor heating system, he highlights that furniture can be arranged freely: if the client later lays down a larger rug, the underfloor heating reduces the temperature there, and the remaining surfaces still supply the house amply.

Does heating film have enough power?

Clients often doubt whether heating film can heat the house. According to the architect, it has not only enough power: without floor and air sensors, with a clumsy setting, it could even make things too warm. The aim, however, is for the system, properly set, to work invisibly in the background and afterwards need hardly any attention.

If you are also planning heating film for a new house or a renovation, at the on-site survey we help you choose where floor, wall or ceiling heating should go and how it should be controlled.