PhDr. Miroslav Pavel, Ph.D.

2023-2027

2018-2022

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.

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2017

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2016

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2016

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2015

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2015-2017

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.

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2014

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