Industrial buildings are the embodiment of economic relations and production methods in a material form. But they are also the creations of real people, and are therefore a reflection of those individuals’ abilities, ambitions, and ideas about the world. Taking a production process and converting it into a spatial arrangement and into the physical dimensions of a building, choosing the right structure and making sure it’s also economical, and deciding what the structure should look like on the exterior are nonetheless all creative acts, anchored in the culture and society of a time. The first part of this publication summarises what has been written in recent years within the wide cultural space of Central Europe about industrial architecture and its creators in either Czech or German. We have translated the latter into Czech because traditionally that is the language in which knowledge is disseminated locally, and we have translated both the Czech and German texts into English because we want to share this knowledge more widely. The second part of the publication contains the catalogue for an exhibition held in 2021 at the Gallery of the National Technical Library in Prague under the title Industrial Architecture in Old Plans and New Media. The exhibition was organised to provide an overview of key examples of industrial architecture in the Czech Lands, but beyond that, and more importantly, to present a picture of the process involved in designing industrial architecture, and to do so with the help of the contemporary materials and original plans on show at the exhibition.
