Martin Horáček

Proceedings of a conference held at the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the commencement of the study programme Architecture of Building Construction at the Faculty of Civil Engineering (FCE), Brno University of Technology (BUT), in the year 2005. As a guarantor of the programme it was established new Institute of Architecture, ARC FCE.  140 p., Brno: Vysoké učení technické v Brně 2016. ISBN 978-80-214-5337-1.

Martin Horáček is an editor of the book, and an author of the essay called History of Architecture as a Studio Discipline? This contribution highlights the limits of commonly accepted way of teaching the“history of architecture” for the architects as a prevailingly supplementary historiographic lecture on the styles which have been relegated from the mainstream; and it ponders several arguments why an adequate knowledge of traditional architectural patterns and forms should be (again) included in the lessons of designing and consequently into the active “language” competence of architects. Generally it is desirable to have a pluralism and flexibility in architect’s expression; a number of traditional design solutions are more efficient, economical and sustainable than fashionable innovations (indisputably in urban planning); architecture as a significant part of the environment of the planet requires rather evolutionary than revolutionary innovations and comprehensive approach whose training is failing if it is not able to functionally integrate the historic know-how into the creative process.

An extract from the Czech edition of Nikos A. Salingaros’s book Unified Architectural Theory: Form, Language, Complexity (2013), translated and enhanced by Martin Horáček, Brno: VUTIUM – B&P Publishing 2017, 402 p., 300 illl. ISBN 978-80-7485-138-4. This teaser includes an introductory essay Towards a Unified Architectural Theory by Martin Horáček (Czech/English), A Conversation between Martin Horáček and Nikos A. Salingaros (Czech/English), Table of Contents, Index of Names and Index of Places.

Cílem této knihy je uvedení do tématu památkové péče. Určena je v první řadě těm, kdo čerstvě vykročili na cestě k porozumění smyslu péče o památky v dnešním světě, ať už jde o studenty nebo sympatizanty z řad veřejnosti. Oborová diskuse je představena jako proměnlivá v čase a prostoru a závislá na rozmanitých okolnostech. Důležitou součást knihy tvoří ilustrace a popisky k nim, dokumentující různorodost výsledků lidského zápolení s problematikou památek.


The main objective of this book is to introduce the topic of heritage conservation. Particular emphasis is put on the areas of the field which lead to the understanding of why monuments and activities included in the area of heritage conservation exist. In this text, the notion of ‘heritage conservation’ refers mainly to the conservation of architectural heritage, because it is an ‘architectural monument’ which most of us recall first upon hearing the words ‘monument’ or ‘heritage’. Illustrations and captions, which document the variety of outcomes resulting from human struggle with heritage issues, constitute an important part of the book. That is why the captions are partly translated to English.
In the first chapter of the book the author discusses the subject of heritage conservation and its professional methods. The subject are the heritage values of monuments and the methods consist of activities that lead to the knowledge and safeguarding the values of particular monuments or particular situations. Just as in other fields based on the judgement of value, it is characteristic for heritage conservation to engage in ongoing discussions on its importance and principles.
By monuments we understand artefacts which are worthy of special care. Their worthiness is based on the fact that special values are attached to them whose loss is to be prevented. Special care refers to the technology used in heritage conservation. Instead of monument the term heritage is often used (it is more fitting especially when talking about e.g. intangible cultural heritage). There are two key values of a monument: historical value and artistic value. Historical value shows the significance of an artefact as a historical document. Artistic value signifies that the artefact enriches the reality in an artistic way. The degree of value is determined by way of comparing it to other objects within the scope of particular category. The interest of heritage conservation can be best understood from negative point of view: how big would the damage be in terms of historical knowledge and aesthetical pleasure should the piece of work disappear?
Heritage conservation consists of targeted efforts to preserve selected pieces of cultural heritage. It is performed by way of record keeping, protecting and rescuing (conservation, restoration, reconstruction) monuments. The approach to a monument differs according to the value which is regarded as a primary or a secondary one. Where the historical criterion prevails, it is important to preserve the ‘period’ image of the artefact even if it was not particularly attractive. In such cases, heritage conservation fosters the awareness of historical changes and the circumstances that led to the changes including those which are ethically disputable and negative. Where the artistic criterion prevails, heritage conservation protects the artefact from aesthetic destruction and repairs ‘defects of the beauty’. In the first case, the main focus is on preserving time dimension of the work. In the second case, the aim is to preserve spatial dimension of the work, i.e. its form or design. However, in most cases the approaches are combined.
Art historians, architects and artists-restorers are the key participants of the professional decision-making process. Nevertheless, since heritage conservation is a public activity, it largely depends on the current social and political agreement.
The second chapter of the book summarises the history of heritage conservation in Europe from antiquity till today. The third chapter of the book describes the heritage conservation in the Czech Republic after 1989. The fourth chapter mentions some of the current issues of heritage conservation (devastation of unprotected areas, insufficient public support, construction boom and poor taste, tourism, global confrontation of various approaches to the conservation of cultural heritage, etc.).

TOWARD A MORE BEAUTIFUL WORLD (Brno: Barrister & Principal – VUTIUM 2013, 448 pp., 760 ill., an extensive English summary) uses innovative methodology to look at the traditionalist attitude in architecture and in the formation of architectural environment. In the five parts, the book (I) analyzes the professional debate around the history of architecture and the diversity of aesthetic preferences within this debate, (II) clarifies a theory that uses results of
neuroscience to explain the attractiveness of traditional buildings, (III) based on this theory, sums up the history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century traditionalist architecture around the world and (IV) in the Czech Lands (the present Czech Republic), and (V) uses two specific examples to illustrate current variations in the relationship between heritage protection, musealization of art and the creation of an aesthetically valuable environment.

The scope of the publication and its comprehensiveness make this book the first of its kind in the field of architectural history. The text is in Czech, nevertheless, international readers find all captions in English and an extensive English summary.

The methodology of this book builds upon the architectural theory of the American scientist Nikos Salingaros, the impulses of world art studies, and the idea that there is a direct relationship between personal preference for a specific artistic morphology and the manner of its (art-historical) interpretation. The findings of brain science help specify the meaning of the words beauty and traditionalism. Even an untrained viewer can feel the contrast between traditional and modern architecture, while neighboring buildings in two different traditional styles (for example a baroque palace and a Gothic church) do not create the same impression of contrast or disharmony. The book explains the difference in aesthetic effect through Salingaros’s term structural order. This concept understands traditional architecture as an architecture designed according to the principles of structural order and modernist architecture as an architecture, where structural order is weak or non-existent. The concept put forward in this book is that architectural traditionalism strives to express structural order, while architectural modernism, which exists simultaneously, does not aim for this kind of order, neither consciously nor intuitively. Art-historical conceptions are also referred to as either traditionalist or modernist, according to which approach to artistic creation they prefer. The struggle toward a more beautiful world is considered a leitmotif of traditionalism – hence the title of the book.

The book’s five parts and fifty chapters address themes such as: the aesthetic theory of empathy as elaborated by Heinrich Wölfflin and Geoffrey Scott; the scientific theory of architecture according to Christopher Alexander and Nikos Salingaros; American renaissance and the City Beautiful movement; city building according to artistic principles in the work of Camillo Sitte, Werner Hegemann and Gustavo Giovannoni; the Heimatschutz movement and Paul Schultze-Naumburg; the destruction and reconstruction of old cities and the Venice Charter; the New Tradition, New Urbanism and the vision of harmonious building according to Prince Charles.

The chapters on the Czech Lands describe architectural works by Friedrich Ohmann, Jan Vejrych, Kamil Hilbert, Ladislav Skřivánek and Dušan Jurkovič and analyze texts by Václav Wagner, Břetislav Štorm, Josef Karel Říha, Ladislav Žák and Jiří Kroha. These chapters also discuss cubism and socialist realism in Czech architecture, new development and heritage conservation during the communist era and after the regime change in 1989, and public interest in the fate of old buildings and in the appearance of towns, villages and landscapes.

The Strict Renaissance in 19th-Century Bohemian Architecture and the Contemporary Debates about Style

This book is the first Czech monograph about one of the most popular styles of 19th-century architecture: "přesná renesance" ("the Strict Renaissance"), as it was called in the architectural discourse of the time. Its advocates considered 15th–16th-century Italian architecture as the ideal basis for artistic work. They argued that this was the most suitable style from an aesthetical, technological as well as political perspective. The book analyzes the views of Prague architects as expressed in the professional press, compares them to the positions of art critics and art historians, and puts them into the context of Central European art debates, especially those that took place between the 1860s and 1880s, when the style prevailed in the Austrian monarchy.

The book is written in Czech, with English summary at the end.

Kniha Přesná renesance v české architektuře 19. století: Dobová diskuse o slohu je první českou samostatnou publikací věnovanou jednomu z nejpopulárnějších slohových proudů v architektuře 19. století, zvanému v dobové publicistice přesná renesance. Jeho stoupenci pokládali za ideální výtvarné východisko pro soudobou tvorbu italskou architekturu 15.–16. století a svou volbu podporovali nejrůznějšími argumenty estetickými i odkazováním na technologické a politické souvislosti tvoření. Kniha rozebírá názory, vyjádřené v odborném tisku pražskými architekty, srovnává je s postoji kritiků a historiků umění a zasazuje je do souvislostí středoevropské debaty o umění zejména šedesátých až osmdesátých let 19. století, kdy sloh v rakouské monarchii převládal.

Kniha je určena studentům, historikům umění a všem dalším zájemcům o architekturu a kulturní dědictví.

Die Fassadenfarbigkeit gehörte zu größen Themen der Architekturgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Beweise für die Farbenlösung bei den antiken, später auch mittelalterlichen, Renaissance- und orientalischen Bauten inspirierten führende Architekten in der ersten Hälfte des
Jahrhunderts  einerseits  zur Gestaltung der Fassaden  aus verschiedenfarbigen Materialien, andererseits zu Experimenten mit Farbanstrichen und zur Anwendung der Ornamental- und Figuralmalereien. Das österreichische Milieu reagierte auf die Diskussion in den europäischen
Zentren mit Verspätung und griff in den Polychromiestreit nicht mehr markanter ein, die Farbigkeit reihte sich jedoch auch hier zwischen die Elemente ein, mit denen die kommende Architektengeneration ihre Neigung zu einer neuen, pluralistischen Stilanschauung manifestierte. Die-
se Schöpfer (L. Förster, T. Hansen, H. Ferstel usw.) formten die Architektur der Ringstrasse-Ära, für ihr spezifisches Stilprogramm, das mit Bestrebung um Gesamtkunstwerk und um Erneuerung der bildenden Formen und Technologien (R. Eitelberger) verbunden war, die Unterstützung von ungeputzten Fassaden aus Qualitätsmaterialien (sog. Materialbau) und die Zusammenarbeit mit Malern bezeichnend waren.
In Mähren, künstlerisch bis Ende des Jahrhunderts eng mit Wien verbunden, sind  relativ zahlreich Rohziegelbauten (oft mit geputzten Flächen oder Steingliedern belebend), die im Falle
der Arbeiterviertel ganze Komplexe formen (Adamov / Adamsthal usw.). Bei historisierenden
Nachbildungen in Schlossparken wurde durch das ungeputzte Mauerwerk eine Illusion der Altertümlichkeit gestärkt (Lednice / Eisgrub – der Aquädukt, die Hansenburg). Ein Programmwerk und wahrscheinlich das einzige Werk, das über die Landesgrenzen wirkte, war der Palast Klein in Brno / Brünn (L. Förster – T. Hansen), mit Steinverblendung und Gußeisengliedern an der Fassa-
de. Meistens wurden unsakralische Objekte mit Vollsteinfassaden nicht versorgt. Das Schloss in Bzenec / Bisenz knüpft mit Formal- und Materielllösung an den Wittelsbacher Palast in München von F. Gärtner an. Glasierte Ziegel wurden originell von K. Weinbrenner benutzt, keramische Verblendung setzte sich vereinzelt durch (J. Gartner, das Haus Ottahal in Olomouc / Olmütz).
Romantische Parkbauten tragen manchmal Fassadenmalereien (ein neogotisches Häuschen
in Rájec nad Svitavou / Raitz und das maurische Badehaus in Eisgrub, vielleicht aus dem Werk
des Architekten K. Zanth oder O. Jones inspiriert). Etwa von Beginn der achtzigen Jahre kommt das ornamentale Neorenaissance-Sgraffito zur Geltung, zusammengenommen aber selten und auf kleinen Flächen: das Stadttheater in Brünn von F. Fellner d. J. und H. Helmer, das Mährische Gewerbemuseum in Brünn von J. Schön, das Stadttheater in Olmütz. Das Figuralsgraffito: das Gymnasium und die Apotheke in Uherské Hradiště / Ungarisch Hradisch, das ausgedehnteste am Palast Schwanz in Brünn (A. Prokop – E. Pirchan – F. Schönbrunner). Außergewöhnlich sind antikisierende Polychromie (A. Prastorfer, eine Gloriette in Brünn) und pompejanische Malereien (die Villa Chleborád in Brünn). In Mähren, wie in Wien, ging die Programmverteidigung der Architekturfarbigkeit vom Kreis des Kunstgewerbemuseums aus (A. Prokop). Mit der Durchdringung von Nationalakzenten in die Architektur verschoben sich Interpretationen der Farbenlösungen. Während an den deutschen Bauten die Aufgabe des Nationalstilattributs der Rohziegel  erhielt, wurden die Böhmische Renaissance und die von  ihr  ausgegangene
folklorisierende Strömung durch Figuralbilder mit vaterländischem  Inhalt definiert  (Maler J. Köhler, L. Novák).

The conference paper analyzes some general aspects of the practice of architectural history in the Czech lands during the period 1989-2010. The situation in the architectural historiography resulted from the unbroken institutional and personal continuity with the previous (Communist) period, with all connected positives and negatives. The number of scholars has increased and several great academical projects have been finished, but the industrial and vernacular heritage has been thoroughly mapped mainly thanks to several former architects and etnographists. In the period of Communism, leading architectural historians learned working in a “quiet opposition“ against the regime, associating the regime with all “popular“ and grasping it with prevailing scepticism. So the Post-Modern Style was welcomed very mildly among historians and critics, and the vernacular had not been placed into the “high art“. After 1989, because the influential academical historians belonged to the most influential critics, the Minimalist contemporary architecture was preferred and awarded, while the Beaux-Arts, but sometimes also the Free-Form architecture was impeached with moral arguments (as a “populism“).
The persisting confusion between aesthetics and ethics results from a reluctance against judging the Communist past – former Brutalists and today’s Minimalists are still presented as “moral“ heros of architectural historiography, as winners against three monsters: the Totalitarianism (connected with Stalin, not with Khrushchev and “the Golden Sixties“), the Historicism, and the Populism (that means the uneducated people’s taste). Also a fear of public discussing of ideas is still persisting, so almost no serious theory of architecture is practised, except for two types of private meditation: the Heideggerian Existentialism (among scholars who were in 1960’s young), and some kind of Deconstruction among members of the next generation. The heritage protection has gained many important victories since 1989, but the concern of historians have differed in place and time. While academical scholars are more engaging in effort for preserving traces of the Modern Movement and popularisation of the Minimalism, the regional heritage protectioners are more agile in civic societies, with open attitude to common ideas of harmony.

Presented at the seminar "Art History on the Disciplinary Map in East-Central Europe", 18 -19 November 2010, Brno, Czech Republic. It was the second seminar in the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute’s East-Central Europe Seminar Series, Unfolding Narratives: Art Histories in East-Central Europe after 1989, taking place in the region between 2010 and 2011. The series was an international initiative of the Research and Academic Program at The Clark, and was made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew. W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative. Regional partners for the seminar were Masaryk University and the Moravian Gallery, Brno.

A review of a Czech edition of collected critical essays by Jan Michl, world-renowned Czech-Norwegian design theorist. Published in Zprávy památkové péče [Journal of Historical Heritage Preservation, Prague] LXXIII, 2013, No. 2, pp. 157–158.

Review of fundamental volume on the art and architecture in Bohemia and Moravia in the XIXth century, published by the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. This version has originally been published online on the Umění / Art journal’s website in 2003 (http://www.umeni-art.cz/cz/soubory/Hor%E1%E8ek.htm). A shorter version is available in printed issue of this journal: Umění / Art LI, 2003, No 3, pp. 249–256.

A poster presented at the XIXth ICOMOS General Assembly and Scientific Symposium, New Delhi, 11th – 15th December 2017. The topic is "the Nature of Order", common in living beings, natural systems, and traditional artifacts. Perceived natural qualities are suggested as the key topic of heritage conservation. Such a holistic approach has  predecessors in the history of the conservation debate, and some of them from Central Europe are named. Over the course of its history, the conservationist movement’s position changed from protecting selected biological and cultural forms to protecting life on earth as such. With this common goal the movement gets an extraordinary ethical boost and the energy necessary for meeting the present challenges. These challenges include not only “heritage” preservation, but also learning about the web of relationships between its individual parts. In protected areas, we should learn to understand the forces that ensure the vitality of pre-industrial environments while they are still perceptible, as the chance may arise to re-construct life in destroyed areas.

The study deals with the phenomena of the final stage of existence of an architectural vocabulary. Could an architectural style really disappear? Or is such an event just a wish of people who would like to replace something "old-fashioned" with something "contemporary", either in reality, or in historiographical story at least? The study was published as a chapter of a book focused on architectural theory and named Tvary – formy – ideje: Studie a eseje k dějinám a teorii architektury [Shapes – Forms – Ideas: Studies and Essays on the History and Theory of Architecture], edd.Taťána Petrasová – Marie Platovská, Praha: Artefactum 2013, pp. 217–231, 343–344 (English summary). ISBN 978-80-86890-47-0.

Study on the District House building in Central Bohemian town od Slaný (architect Jan Vejrych, 1900–02), discussing the aspect of choice of architectural vocabulary and its "propriety" in traditional built environment. Published in Czech (with an English summary) as a chapter of a book focused on art historical methodology and named Od Kabaly k Titaniku: Deset studií nejen z dějin umění [From Kabbalah to Titanic: Ten Studies not only in Art History], edd. Lubomír Konečný – Anna Rollová – Rostislav Švácha, Praha: Artefactum 2013, pp.  69–101. ISBN 978-80-86890-58-6.

The book chapter discusses ideas about the end of architectural styles. The use of the notion “revival” in a style debate (Gothic Revival, etc.) seems to be an expression of a persuasion that discussed style expirated in a certain moment, and after a period of its non-existence occurred again, “revived”. But is this construct correct? How can the existence of a style be stopped? Art historians invented three basic hypotheses. First, a style dies as a living organism. Second, a style continues its evolution in another culture. Third, a style disappears because it ceases to be fashionable. What serve these hypotheses for? Who likes the notion “revival”, and why “revivalists” usually reject it? How is a style retained in memory, waiting for its “revival”?

A comparative analysis of Josip Plečnik’s architecture in the context of western traditionalist architectural movement of the last century. Interwar traditionalism, New classicism, New urbanism and garden design aspects are particularly highlighted. Published a a chapter in a book Cesta za Plečnikem, edd. Svatopluk Sládeček – Petr Šmídek, Brno: VUT v Brně 2017, pp. 40–51. ISBN 978-80-214-5534-4.

The paper is a tribute to the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens on the occasion of his 140th birth anniversary. Lutyens was an important follower of classicism who worked in the first half of the 20th century and later has been received by critics and historians rather ambiguously. First part of the article presents Lutyens’ biography. The second part is reviewing some of the recent British and American estimations of Lutyens’ work advocating its value, attraction and exemplariness.
The third part deals with particular questions and preliminary conclusions concerning the fate of classicist architectural tradition in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia in relation to the previous parts of the contribution. Published in Architektúra & Urbanizmus [Architecture & Town Planning, Bratislava] 43, 2009, No. 3-4, pp. 126-143.

This study is concerned with the New Acropolis Museum, which was opened in June 2009 in Athens. The New Acropolis Museum, out of all of the world’s new museum structures of the past century, has dramatically intensified the issue of the relationship between parts and the whole, between the building and its integration into the setting, between the museum function and the historical city, which is a protected heritage site, one treated as a museum exhibit. With the New Acropolis Museum as an example, the study would like to highlight the complexity and the ambiguity of the present-day relationship between the heritage protection, the museumisation of art and the design of our environment. The particular attention is focused on the vivid debate about the building and the distinguishing the differences between traditionalist and modernist views of architecture manifested in this debate. These differences are deeper rooted than many people have been willing to admit.

A Czech translation of the INTBAU Venice Declaration on the Conservation of Monuments and Sites in the 21st Century (2007). Czech comments by Martin Horáček added, with a brief information about INTBAU – International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism. Published in Zprávy památkové péče [Journal of Historical Heritage Preservation, Prague] LXVIII, 2008, No. 3, pp. 237–239.

An essay criticizing cultural politics based on exploitation and misuse of cultural heritage. An example of controversial museum extension project in the city of Opava (Czech republic) is discussed, with an obvious clash with architectural values of preserved building. Published in Protimluv: Revue pro kulturu [Contradiction: Cultural Revue, Ostrava] XII, 2013, No. 3–4, pp. 60–62.

A critical essay on the connection between art history and heritage conservation, that has not been always equally beneficial. Contradictional attitudes of both disciplines are discussed, with historical and contemporary examples. Published as a chapter of a book by Petra Hečková – Petr Horák – Luboš Machačko (edd.), Interdisciplinarita v péči o kulturní dědictví / Interdisciplinarity in Heritage Conservation, Pardubice: Univerzita Pardubice 2013, pp. 63–70. ISBN 978-80-7395-594-6.

A presentation of the Czech translation of a seminal book on architectural theory by Nikos A. Salingaros and others, with a conversation between the author and the Czech editor, and two chapters (in Czech). Published in Kontexty [Contexts, Brno] IX, 2017, No. 1, pp. 49–66.

A comment on the proposed regulation urban plan for Prague, so-called Metropolitan Plan, with a critical emphasis on the issue of high-rises. Published in Bulletin České komory architektů [Bulletin of the Czech Chamber of Architects, Prague] XX, 2013, No. 3, pp. 38–39.