Michal Maximilián Scheer

In 1925, the first architecture graduates completed their studies at the two technical universities in Brno – the Czech and the German institutions. Among them was Maximilián Scheer. The existence of a significant body of unique written and visual archival materials reveals not only details about the course of Scheer’s studies, his pedagogical guidance, and […]

Two Paths Out of the Suburban Situation

At the start of the millennium, many settlements that were originally villages at the suburban edge of Prague saw their populations multiply several times, yet without corresponding growth in the capacity of civic infrastructure and accompanied by a notable erosion of social cohesion or local identity. This study draws parallels between two radically diverging paths […]

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

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 […]

When Architecture Is Transcendence: Vital Poetry and Social Intervention

Lina Bo Bardi (1914 – 1992) was a woman architect working in a man’s world. Italian by birth and training, Lina produced her work in Brazil, the place where, in 1946, she chose to live in exile. Lina’s way of thinking kept evolving, being permeable to the Brazilian miscegenation between African, Indian and European cultures, […]

The Interpretation of Architecture as a Methodological Problem

In this essay we hope to address a few methodological issues in interpreting a work of architecture that have gradually shown themselves to be problematic and at the same time productive. If we accept interpretation as one possible approach to an architectural work, then the fundamental issue of interpretation becomes the question of the sense […]

Sarajevo Memories – the City of Sublime Disorder

The development of cities as well as collective memory is not a linear process, but one strongly related to the ever-changing dynamics of time and space. The manner in which urban tissue evolves through anticipated events, or is disrupted by unforeseen, often chaotic happenings, comes together in a myriad of networks that generate different levels […]