FFA students and lecturer present research at the international conference Design in an Age of Uncertainty
On 3 September 2026, research projects from the Faculty of Fine Arts BUT were presented at the Design History Society’s international annual conference Design in an Age of Uncertainty. In recent years, design historian and FFA lecturer Ladislav Jackson has involved FFA students Ondřej Bodlák from the Drawing and Printmaking Studio and Veronika Kučerová from the Game Media Studio in his research on Czech-Austrian-American architect and designer Liane Zimbler (1982–1987).The collaboration aimed to explore whether some of the limitations of traditional design-historical research could be overcome through artistic research methods. A key challenge is the fact that the vast majority of Zimbler’s interiors have not survived and are known only through black-and-white photographs, design drawings, published reproductions, and written descriptions. The students’ projects therefore did not seek to create definitive reconstructions, but rather to experimentally explore and make accessible those qualities of the interiors that are preserved only fragmentarily in historical sources.
The first project was developed by Ondřej Bodlák from the Drawing and Printmaking Studio. He focused on colour, texture, and ornament, which were essential tools in Zimbler’s approach to shaping the psychological effect of an interior, but which can only be reconstructed to a limited extent from surviving black-and-white reproductions. Drawing on historical documentation, designs, and Zimbler’s theoretical writings, he created a series of fifteen original patterns that reinterpret the characteristic visual repertoire of her interiors from interwar Vienna and post-war California. The series includes botanical and floral motifs, stylised branches, birds, chinoiserie and landscape motifs, both geometric and more decorative structures, as well as distinctive colour combinations. The result is not a literal reconstruction of a specific lost interior, but rather a visual study that makes it possible to explore how the combination of ornament, colour, and texture may have influenced the atmosphere and perception of domestic space.
The second project was created by Veronika Kučerová from the Game Media Studio and is based on a specific Zimbler project: the modernisation of a woman’s bedroom in Vienna in 1934. In this renovation, Zimbler made extensive use of the existing furniture, moving it around, removing outdated decorative elements, modifying it, and adapting it to new functions. Kučerová translated this principle into the form of an experimental digital game. The player works with the existing furnishings of the room and can move individual pieces of furniture, change their orientation and function, modify them, or remove certain parts. The aim of the game is to “modernise” the interior while maximising the preservation and reuse of existing materials and objects. The game therefore functions not merely as an illustration of a historical design, but as a practical tool for testing Zimbler’s principles of variability, adaptation, and upcycling, and for gaining a better understanding of the decision-making process behind her designs.
| Author | Mgr. Tímea Vitázková |
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| Short URL | https://www.favu.vut.cz/en//f26745/d360901 |