History of Library
The existence of the library is evidently closely related to the founding of the Institute for Urbanism. Antonín Engel, a student of Otto Wagner and the author of the grand concept of the construction of Dejvice established the Institute for Urban Construction in 1925 at the Faculty of Architecture. At that time, Alois Mikuškovic (the Director of the institute from 1938) was entrusted with leading the institute as an “adjunct” professor. The oldest books in the collection are equipped with Mikuškovic’s stamp.
In the interwar period, the main successor to Alois Mikuškovic was Jindřich Krise, who headed the institute after him. Krise is known primarily as the author of the construction of the Pankrác Plain, though it diverted significantly from his plan, and for his friendship with the French urbanist Robert Auzelle who, for a change, conceived the renowned La Défense hub and also gave Krise several of his books on urban construction. Today they are part of the library.
Larger collections include the writings of Le Corbusier and of Czech authors like Jiří Hrůza and Emanuel Hruška. Hruška’s section is especially important, because this Czech architect and urbanist is not that well known, though he was at the birth of the Institute for Urban Construction at the Masaryk Labour Academy and the Institute for Urban Construction at the Bratislava Technical University.
The members of the Institute of Urbanism has been trying for a long time to renew its library in at least an on-site form. The first step is making the library collection electronic and the second step is to purchase a satisfactory number of new books on the theme of urbanism.
The Institutes ambition is to hold short meetings in the library about the new titles or to also invite authors of new books on urbanism to come lecture.