Category: Scientific Study

INTRODUCTIONThe Greek term kinema signifies motion or movement, while contemporary contextualization of the notion cinema denotes the architectural space in which we become part of the visual system that allows us to perceive a sense of movement and which moves us. As the notion cinematic space presupposes an integrated temporality, and since temporality is traditionally […]

Interpretations of the Architectural and Cultural Values of Heritage in the Revitalization Process

The starting point for the cultural interpretation of an architectural work with respect to its potential revitalization can assume a decisive role in terms of determination of the guidelines for evaluation, protection and/or revitalization of architectural heritage. Starting in the 19th century, when the fundaments of a theory of architectural heritage were laid down, two […]

Towards a New Monumentality: The Creation of an Urban Cultural Landscape

Issue: 2016, Volume 50, No. 1 - 2

The Lisbon headquarters and park of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG), located in the Parque de Santa Gertrudes, created the public image of the Gulbenkian Foundation: an expression of culture that became synonymous in Portugal with social progress and thus a sign of a new monumentality. This aspiration was defined at the outset by its […]

Planning the Unplanned City: Modern Urban Conceptions in a Traditional Urban Structure

In our thinking about the city and about city regulations, land-use and/or spatial planning, several independent lines of argument have emerged. One of them is the artistic-compositional stance, derived from the traditional central principle of architectonic creation, focusing on the production of an aesthetically pleasing functional-structural whole. This result has the character of an inclusive […]

The Boulevard as a Type of Urban Linear Space

FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEMLinear landscaping structures occupy a special position among the range of urban green areas. Running through particular parts of the city, they form relatively narrow but elongated strips of urban greenery. This scheme of planning provides the residents of the neighborhoods with a brief daily recreation, gathering them in the local areas, […]

The Lifespan of Large Prefabricated Housing Estates in Post-communist Cities: an International Comparison

he future of large prefabricated housing estates is one of the key problems of sustainable urban development in post-Communist countries. In Western Europe, there are only 1.8 million such flats; in the countries, however, which lie between the former East Germany and the Russian Far East, there are more than 53 million panel flats, inhabited […]

Thansformation of an Inner City in the Postsocialist Period, Case Study Holešovice, Prague

The text addresses the issue of the spatial arrangement of new office and residential complexes built in the inner part of Prague during the post-socialist time. After 1990, the transformation of the Eastern bloc state of Czechoslovakia into the present Czech Republic led to the implementation of major economic and social changes, as reflected in […]

Visions, Planning and Strategic Urban Development: the Example of Prague

States are born from certain visions; they are formed and legitimised by them. Cities as well form their own visions, and they attempt to project them in development concepts and strategies. In the history of Czech cities, the footprints of visions linked to strategic decisions can be noted in particular when radical changes of their […]

The Sense of a Hous. On Levinas’s Importance for Thinking about Architecture

Emmanuel Levinas (1906 – 1995), one of the greatest phenomenologically oriented philosophers of the 20th century, is not an author whom we encounter often when reading texts about architecture. Despite his extensive body of writings on art, he never produced any text directly concerning architecture. However, if we measure the importance of works by other […]

Form and its Reception in Architecture. On the Example of the Agricultural University Campus in Nitra

The title of this paper refers to the polarity between formalism and reception aesthetics, emerging in the 1960s yet implicitly formulated much sooner, for example in Czech and Slovak structuralism. The aim of this text is to demonstrate how this polarity shaped the contextual background of architectural thinking in the second half of the 20th […]

The Analysis of Interpretational Procedures in Peter Eisenman‘s Book ten Canonical Buildings

The present paper is concerned with the interpretational procedures in Peter Eisenman’s book Ten Canonical Buildings. This book offers ten interpretations of architectural works from the period between the years 1950 – 2000 as well as a meta-interpretation of these interpretations. This latter meta-interpretation has both ontological and architectural-historiographical consequences, as it inevitably touches upon […]

Invisible Architects: The First Generation of Women in Slovak Architecture

The present study devotes attention to the activities of the women architects who were the first graduates of the Faculty of Architecture and Construction at the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and started their careers in design work in the midpoint of the 20th century. Through several personalities selected on the basis of their authorial […]

Interpretive Residues in Architecture and the Baťa House of Services in Bratislava

The significance of historic events is never unequivocally clear, but instead always subject to change along with the methods of their understanding. In every era, the problem of producing historiography invariably rises again and again, and thus history always needs, in a sense, to be rewritten. Even art history cannot interpret a work of art […]

INTERPRETATION BY MONOGRAPH The Biographical Genre in New Scholarly Publications on Important Slovak Architects

During the period that has elapsed since the publication of the present author’s previous survey (Dulla, Matúš: Personalities and influences. Contribution to the study of modern architecture in Slovakia. Architektúra & urbanizmus 41, 2008, 1 – 2, pp. 5 – 20), a significant shift has been noticed in the practice of Slovak architectural monographs. In […]

Reception and Architectural Interpretation: The Television Tower and Hotel Ještěd and The Prague-Žižkov Television Tower

The paper focuses on the problem of the public or architectural interpretation and reception of two extraordinary buildings: the combined hotel and television tower on Mt. Ještěd near Liberec and the Žižkov Television Tower in Prague. The paper is divided into three chapters: 1) Architecture and the Historic Context, 2) Architecture and the Topological (Landscape […]

The Critical Potential of “Total Installations” – The Logic of Ilya Kabakov

The critical potential of “total installations”— the logic of Ilya KabakovThis paper focuses on the analysis of the installation Ten Characters by Ilya Kabakov, as this artwork is considered as a crucial instance in interpreting Soviet narratives and figures as a metaphor for life in the Soviet Union. The paper shows that Kabakov draws attention […]

Context in the Works of Nikola Dobrović on the Territory of Herceg Novi

In the conditions of current globalization trends, the creation of a new European political and spatial context and the expression of regional cultural differences, a need has emerged to redefine cultural and urban identity. Spatial-cultural identity is particularly strong in settings enriched by a recognisable geo-climate and cultural and built heritage such as the Adriatic […]

The New Bratislava of Josef Marek

The study represents the urban-planning work of the relatively unknown Moravian-born architect Josef Marek, a pupil of Jan Kotěra and a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. During his years in Slovakia after 1919 up until the end of the 1950s, Marek created an entire series of urban plans, though the form […]

The Czech Discourse on Regional Planning Between 1945 and 1948

The study focuses on the peak period of Czech regional planning during the short-lived postwar Czechoslovak democracy (between 1945 and 1948). The author examines the attitudes of leading actors of the debate about regional planning, and discusses how their concepts corresponded with the immediate rhetoric of ongoing political, social and economic transformation. Among the leading […]

The Urban Space of the Migrant Crisis: Analysis of the Spatial Evolution of an Informal Transit Camp in Budapest’s Historic City Centre

From June till September 2015, Baross Square in front of Budapest’s Keleti Railway Station became the temporary living area for thousands of refugees and migrants travelling to Western Europe. This unconventional use of one of the busiest squares in the historic centre gave rise to a new perception of the existing environment. The paper aims […]

Microbial Ecologies Exploring Industrial Hemp Behaviour under Artificial Climates (Growing Apparatus)

Microbial Ecologies (ME) is proposing a speculative scenario in which is able to explore new robotic fabrication processes as a framework for investigating the generation of bio-artificial systems. These systems allow us to regenerate polluted and eroded terrains, protect the soil from farther erosion and encourage healthy plant growth using interconnected 3D fibre systems.

Material Moods: Material and Algorithms

The introduction of emergence theory in architecture nearly 10 years ago rapidly changed the field of digital architecture towards process-oriented design. The functioning process of algorithms shifts the designer’s approach to the field away from the modeling (copying) of forms toward their generating. As designers no longer fully control the final shape, the computer and […]

The Smooth Striped City

The main aim of urban design should be to provide as elastic a plan as possible. This plan should define private and public space and allow its users the maximum possibilities and freedom to build. We seek such tools and methods that would be elementary but also sophisticated, which using only a few rules could […]

From Architecture and Construction to the Planning of Autonomous Processes, Systems and Structures

Studio FLO│W at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague holds the belief that a digitally-driven architecture should be flexible, interactive and adaptable. The digital revolution, together with the development of new advanced materials, has principally changed the way of planning, directing, controlling and building constructions. Through the creative engagement of […]

The Project “Learning by Doing” at FA CTU

Can you learn architecture without direct experience? In recent years, attention has been paid to the idea of “design-build” projects at schools of architecture, the methodology of which makes it possible to bring students to the reality of architectural practice differently than the simply mediated. Students have the opportunity to create a proposal for a […]

Behind the Glitch: Research by Digital Drawing in Contemporary Architecture Education