Architecture
Architecture as we understand the terms should not reject tradition, urban context and convention, but develop these concepts in creative ways. The studio is taught in Czech.
Employees
The starting point of a good student design is the selection of appropriate references already stress-tested under real-life conditions that are fully in line with the assignment while reworking it aesthetically and ethically. However, these references do not remain in their original historical integrity, but are compositionally recontextualised and adapted to today’s demands on beauty, practicality and economic feasibility.
From the very start, a student presents their design not as a concept, but as a complete architectural image of shape, space and atmosphere. They then enhance this image with practical, constructional and technical features. Consultation and criticism are backed up by cooperation with experts. Over the long term we are striving to integrate important professional disciplines such as construction and structural engineering, landscape architecture, ecology and conservation work. Students join forces with other creative spheres. The last stage in a design, namely a credible but suggestive presentation using image, plan and model, is subject to consultation with a specialist in professional visualisation, 3D-modelling and rendering.
We guide students to the core of reform architecture as a intermediary between a radically modern and nostalgically historicising tendency, assigning real professional tasks and existing city contexts for the end-of-semester design. We expect everyone to integrate their architecture into the given place and atmosphere so as to create new ensemble.
Our graduate should be a young professional who creatively and respectfully reshapes the city and architectural traditions, vigorously seeks that elusive ‘solution élégante’ in architecture, integrates ever-changing specialist knowledge, is capable of assuming the role of a responsible and competent expert in society, and is equipped as a generalist to lead their own practice and an interdisciplinary team of specialists. We expect applicants for doctoral study to submit a project that is architecturally relevant and reflects the broader social, aesthetic and ethical issues surrounding the city, architecture, and individual functions and genres.
Architectural design is urbanitas + venustas + utilitas + firmitas. Creating compositional excellence, shaping a powerful space and imbuing a building with a specific poetry – this is closely intertwined with the city’s architectural heritage, collective imagery and symbols, practical conventions and the technical and economic rules of the profession. Architecture has not been, and cannot be, a free art, an artefact ex nihilo, merely a pure, autonomous form and space.