Research projects
Responsible person
Responsible team
duration of the project
2023-2027
Responsible person
Responsible team
duration of the project
2018-2022
Annotation
Czech post-war architecture has in recent years been the subject of substantial attention from the professional community and the general public. Dozens of publications, exhibitions, and research projects have emerged that focus on the optimistic sixties and the echoes of that era in the seventies. However, the architecture of the very next decade has thus far been ignored. Despite the system of socio-political normalisation in effect at the time, the eighties are deserving of detailed research. It was a decade that produced many new ideas. Despite the political restrictions, contemporary theories made it into Czechoslovakia from abroad, and this included theories on the postmodern humanisation of modern and industrialised construction and the first signs of a more responsible approach in relation to the living environment. Many activities and discussions in the professional architectural community took on the character of a search for a parallel, humanised reality (e.g. Urbanity, Painted Architecture), and in the second half of the decade this social ferment also certainly mirrored the gradual thaw in the regime that was under way. Together with the after-effects of building projects from the sixties and seventies and alongside the highly centralised and politicised stream of standard production, the eighties saw the gradual rise of parallel alternative trends and high ambitions in architectural practice that reached well beyond the closed atmosphere of the era and the border of the socialist state. This NAKI project seeks to map the architecture of that period, its background in theory, and specific projects, buildings, interiors, and structures, and also aims to make a record of the current condition of the building stock from that period.
Responsible person
Responsible team
duration of the project
2016-2020
Annotation
The project focuses on the state of architecture during transformation periods, examining the Czech architecture in 1945-1948 and 1989-1992. Realized (initiated) buildings and contemporary professional debate will be analyzed using the methodology of art history and sociological and transitological knowledge. The core of the project will be the juxtaposition of long-term utopian ideological concepts of Czech architecture of the 20th century and of the immediate rhetoric of transition. Emphasis will be placed on the importance of individual actors - architects, theorists and investors - in the unsteady institutional environment of the transition period.
Responsible person
Dulla, M.
Responsible team
duration of the project
2015
Responsible person
Responsible team
duration of the project
2015-2017
Annotation
The project aims at evaluation of the existing built substance as well as emerging architectural production with respect to the impact of two principal determinants which together have a decisive influence on the final form of a work of architecture. These determinants are public interest on one hand, represented by legal norms and by the position of state to architectural and building production, and public culture on the other hand, which, as the carrier of cultural values, reflects the atmosphere in the society and the ever-changing taste responding to social and cultural circumstances. The research covers an extensive time span from early 20th century to present day, and thus takes in account the changes of social and political systems, innovations in building technologies, and the development of architectural production in the given period of time.
Responsible person
Responsible team
duration of the project
2011-2013
Annotation
In the Czech architecture after the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, we can observe a departure from the almost traditional thinking of architecture and architectural design as methods for visualisation of social utopias. Up till then, throughout the 20th century, not even the relative austerity of Czech architecture managed to rule out its utopian social charge. A fascinating manifestation of architecture as social utopia is seen by Czech art historiography in the vision of collective housing. This project aims to examine in depth the questions of collective housing in Czech Lands in 1900-1989, both on the plane of theory and utopian plans and on that of completed buildings. This research is to advance our understanding of the history of modern and contemporary Czech architecture, history of housing in the 20th century in the Czech Lands, and history of architecture as an instrument of social utopia.