The book, published on the 150th anniversary of the birth of architect, designer, artist, educator, organizer and urban planner Jan Kotěra, contains ten chapters by architectural historians containing new interpretations of Kotěra’s work and themes that have not yet received attention.

In two chapters, Jana Sklenářová Teichmanová and Ladislav Zikmund-Lender focus on Kotěra’s teaching career at Prague’s Academy of Arts and Design and the Academy of Fine Arts. Three chapters by Helena Čapková, Miroslav Pavel and Ladislav Zikmund-Lender focus on Kotěra’s contacts with foreign countries and the international transfer of ideas: Japan and “Orientalism”, the Netherlands and the United States. Two chapters by Vendula Hnídková and Markéta Žáčková introduce Kotera as an urbanist.

Jan Galeta focuses his attention on the use of the traditions of the past in Kotěra’s work, showing that his image of the revolutionary who rejected everything historical is just a traditional myth. Ladislav Zikmund-Lender shows in the next chapter Kotěra’s ambition to create a synthetic style for the new Czechoslovak state after 1918, which was not very much fulfilled.

Filip Šenk updates the principles of Kotěra’s architecture with several examples of contemporary architecture. The book also includes an extensive selection of Kotěra’s journalistic activities from 1900-1921 and texts about Jan Kotěra from 1922-1972, both of which are introduced by historiographical studies.

The book contains over two hundred reproductions, mostly unpublished historical designs and photographs, a set of contemporary photographs of details of Kotěra’s architecture by Jiří Zikmund and twelve illustrations by Jan Šrámek.

1000 CZK

Mýtus architekta: Jan Kotěra 150 (The Myth of the Architect: Jan Kotěra 150)