Mgr. Tereza Pokorná

2020-2022

Despite the great attractiveness of the architecture of the 1980s, which brought to Czechoslovakia news such as low-tech or postmodernism, this period of our architectural history is so far very little explored. Mainly in the second half of the 1980s aside and often despite the stream of the official design studios and The Czech architects Union many collective exhibitions of architects, home seminars and activities defining-against demolition of historical neighbourhoods arose - all this formed the parallel architectural scene. In many ways, architects have responded to impulses seeping through the iron curtain thanks to rare foreign publications or even exceptional visits by foreign architects and theorists. Postmodernism has become an important source of inspiration (mainly due to the personality of Jiří Ševčík and a close circle of architects around him, but also the work of VÚVA). The activities of the parallel architectural scene and its connection to discussions among young architects discussing foreign theories and practices were decisive for the local architectural scene. The presented student project wants to examine these tendencies significant for their time, which weren't described yet.

Detail

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.

Detail