Adolf Loos ▲ Interior of the Bauer Chateau ▲ Brno ▲ 1922—1923

The educational programme aims to demonstrate that creative exchange and cooperation between art centres in Central Europe have a strong historical tradition and were a condition for the rise of modern art, architecture, and design in this region. The intensive programme is based on the presentation and discussion of the results of current research by BUT specialists, researchers, and academics. It will focus on the circumstances and results of the work of selected artists who straddled between Brno, Vienna, and Bratislava: Adolf Loos and his students, Dušan Jurkovič, Jaroslav Polivka and Liane Zimbler. Emphasis will be placed not only on the aesthetic innovations brought about by their work, but also on the cross-border nature of their lives and work, social changes to which they had to respond, but also topics such as migration, assimilation, cultural exchange, emancipation, the relationship between local and international, etc.

The aim of the educational program is the acquisition of the interpretive abilities of architecture, design, and art, the acquisition of complex competencies associated with the historical research of architecture and design, knowledge of several unknown monuments in situ, knowledge of applied approaches in monument care and museology of the presentation of their work and legacy.

The programme is methodologically anchored in the so-called horizontal history of art, the aim of which is to erase the stereotypical ideas of the centre and the periphery and the limits that this thinking offers. The history of architecture, design, and art of the 20th century emphasises the performances of creators located in cultural and administrative centres, and the creation of supposed peripheries remained even on the fringes of interest. But we are convinced that it is precisely migration and the exchange of ideas and creativity between different localities that created the dynamism, complexity, and contradictions of the modern movement.

The programme is based on the belief that only contact with original works mediates their correct grasp of valid and convincing interpretations. That is why the workshop includes an indivisible part consisting of excursions and workshops, where the central teaching method is the mutual discussion of findings in situ with appropriate theoretical and historical pre-understanding. This pre-understanding is ensured by the transitioning virtual part with specialist lectures summarising the current state of knowledge and the assignment of reading theoretical texts, the knowledge of which is necessary for the physical part.

The programme combines the following teaching methods: frontal lectures with seminar parts of reading and interpretation of texts; historical analysis and interpretation of architectural and design works with an emphasis on social and political contexts, museology regarding the absence of archival documents to reconstruct the stories of individual works; museology relating to the presentation of architectural and design works; monument restoration of individual works and monument care and presentation. These methodological problems will be explored based on focused debates and excursions with examples of diverse approaches to museology as well as monument care and presentation.

Dušan Jurkovič ▲ Interior of the Villa Rezko ▲ 1902

Jaroslav Polívka ▲ Passage in Jalta Palace ▲ Brno ▲ 1928—1929

Although Adolf Loos was a controversial figure in the history of the first third of the 20th century, his uncompromising emphasis on cosmopolitanism and the innovation of life through lifestyle and design is still inspiring today. Adolf Loos not only designed his works in Vienna, Prague, Pilsen, and Paris but also intensively worked in Brno and its immediate surroundings thanks to the collaboration with Viktor Bauer the Knight. In Brno, he had several collaborators, followers, and promoters: especially Alfred Neumann and Jan Vaňek. Loos was simultaneously involved in wide international artistic networks.

In the period before the WWI, Dušan Jurkovič became famous primarily for his work in the Czech and Moravian countryside, where he promoted the vernacular style. In 1907—1908, he realised the Nahlovsky Villa in Prague, which, however, responded to the international, modernist style of the Arts&Crafts movement. His Brno villa is a fusion of both tendencies: local and international. After his return to Bratislava after the WWI, he developed the architecture of modern classicism and traditionalism there. Dušan Jurkovič represents a creator of Central European modernity, whose legacy shows that local and international were not mutually exclusive but managed to create remarkable synergies.

Jaroslav Polívka was a forgotten structural engineer who became famous in the United States after the WWII as a close collaborator of Frank Lloyd Wright. In the 1920s and 1930s, however, he designed architecture in Czechoslovak cities and countryside, and he was primarily interested in technological innovation: he saw the future in concrete, steel, and glass. He took a significant part in the international presentation of Czechoslovakia at the world exhibitions in 1937 and 1939. He also left his works in Brno and the Slovak countryside (Štrbske Pleso and Novy Smokovec). These works also show an effort to apply the so-called modernity in the folk, to combine modern life with the products and ornaments of the folk style.

Liane Zimbler represents a large group of Czech, German-speaking Jewish architects who found great employment in multinational Brno, but were wiped out after the Second World War. Although Liane Zimbler was born in Přerov, she lived and worked in Vienna until 1939. From the 1920s, she identified with the feminist movement and mainly created buildings and especially interior designs that were supposed to simplify the lives of women and contribute to their emancipation. She left one of her most complex realisations in Brno.

Liane Zimbler ▲ Bedroom of a Viennese Apartment ▲ 1934