Experimenting with Temporality and Cinematic Techniques as an Alternative Position in Architecture

INTRODUCTIONThe Greek term kinema signifies motion or movement, while contemporary contextualization of the notion cinema denotes the architectural space in which we become part of the visual system that allows us to perceive a sense of movement and which moves us. As the notion cinematic space presupposes an integrated temporality, and since temporality is traditionally […]

Interpretations of the Architectural and Cultural Values of Heritage in the Revitalization Process

The starting point for the cultural interpretation of an architectural work with respect to its potential revitalization can assume a decisive role in terms of determination of the guidelines for evaluation, protection and/or revitalization of architectural heritage. Starting in the 19th century, when the fundaments of a theory of architectural heritage were laid down, two […]

Towards a New Monumentality: The Creation of an Urban Cultural Landscape

The Lisbon headquarters and park of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG), located in the Parque de Santa Gertrudes, created the public image of the Gulbenkian Foundation: an expression of culture that became synonymous in Portugal with social progress and thus a sign of a new monumentality. This aspiration was defined at the outset by its […]

Planning the Unplanned City: Modern Urban Conceptions in a Traditional Urban Structure

In our thinking about the city and about city regulations, land-use and/or spatial planning, several independent lines of argument have emerged. One of them is the artistic-compositional stance, derived from the traditional central principle of architectonic creation, focusing on the production of an aesthetically pleasing functional-structural whole. This result has the character of an inclusive […]

The Boulevard as a Type of Urban Linear Space

FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEMLinear landscaping structures occupy a special position among the range of urban green areas. Running through particular parts of the city, they form relatively narrow but elongated strips of urban greenery. This scheme of planning provides the residents of the neighborhoods with a brief daily recreation, gathering them in the local areas, […]

The Lifespan of Large Prefabricated Housing Estates in Post-communist Cities: an International Comparison

he future of large prefabricated housing estates is one of the key problems of sustainable urban development in post-Communist countries. In Western Europe, there are only 1.8 million such flats; in the countries, however, which lie between the former East Germany and the Russian Far East, there are more than 53 million panel flats, inhabited […]

Thansformation of an Inner City in the Postsocialist Period, Case Study Holešovice, Prague

The text addresses the issue of the spatial arrangement of new office and residential complexes built in the inner part of Prague during the post-socialist time. After 1990, the transformation of the Eastern bloc state of Czechoslovakia into the present Czech Republic led to the implementation of major economic and social changes, as reflected in […]

Visions, Planning and Strategic Urban Development: the Example of Prague

States are born from certain visions; they are formed and legitimised by them. Cities as well form their own visions, and they attempt to project them in development concepts and strategies. In the history of Czech cities, the footprints of visions linked to strategic decisions can be noted in particular when radical changes of their […]

The Sense of a Hous. On Levinas’s Importance for Thinking about Architecture

Emmanuel Levinas (1906 – 1995), one of the greatest phenomenologically oriented philosophers of the 20th century, is not an author whom we encounter often when reading texts about architecture. Despite his extensive body of writings on art, he never produced any text directly concerning architecture. However, if we measure the importance of works by other […]

Form and its Reception in Architecture. On the Example of the Agricultural University Campus in Nitra

The title of this paper refers to the polarity between formalism and reception aesthetics, emerging in the 1960s yet implicitly formulated much sooner, for example in Czech and Slovak structuralism. The aim of this text is to demonstrate how this polarity shaped the contextual background of architectural thinking in the second half of the 20th […]

The Analysis of Interpretational Procedures in Peter Eisenman‘s Book ten Canonical Buildings

The present paper is concerned with the interpretational procedures in Peter Eisenman’s book Ten Canonical Buildings. This book offers ten interpretations of architectural works from the period between the years 1950 – 2000 as well as a meta-interpretation of these interpretations. This latter meta-interpretation has both ontological and architectural-historiographical consequences, as it inevitably touches upon […]

Invisible Architects: The First Generation of Women in Slovak Architecture

The present study devotes attention to the activities of the women architects who were the first graduates of the Faculty of Architecture and Construction at the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and started their careers in design work in the midpoint of the 20th century. Through several personalities selected on the basis of their authorial […]

Interpretive Residues in Architecture and the Baťa House of Services in Bratislava

The significance of historic events is never unequivocally clear, but instead always subject to change along with the methods of their understanding. In every era, the problem of producing historiography invariably rises again and again, and thus history always needs, in a sense, to be rewritten. Even art history cannot interpret a work of art […]

INTERPRETATION BY MONOGRAPH The Biographical Genre in New Scholarly Publications on Important Slovak Architects

During the period that has elapsed since the publication of the present author’s previous survey (Dulla, Matúš: Personalities and influences. Contribution to the study of modern architecture in Slovakia. Architektúra & urbanizmus 41, 2008, 1 – 2, pp. 5 – 20), a significant shift has been noticed in the practice of Slovak architectural monographs. In […]

Reception and Architectural Interpretation: The Television Tower and Hotel Ještěd and The Prague-Žižkov Television Tower

The paper focuses on the problem of the public or architectural interpretation and reception of two extraordinary buildings: the combined hotel and television tower on Mt. Ještěd near Liberec and the Žižkov Television Tower in Prague. The paper is divided into three chapters: 1) Architecture and the Historic Context, 2) Architecture and the Topological (Landscape […]

Editorial

This issue focuses on the problem of the interpretation and meta-interpretation of architecture. The prevailing approaches are metainterpretational, that is those, which do not interpret architectural works themselves but existing interpretations of architectural works. We have chosen various, mostly borderline interpretational positions. Two papers focus on the subject of meta-interpretation concerning non-professional or amateur interpretations, […]

Amateur Interpretations of Architecture, Individual Structures and Housing Estates in the Czech Daily Press, 1868 – 1989

In the present article, the author presents a summarisation of the results of his study of the Czech daily press across a time period of 120 years. The scope of the reading is not limited to the papers issued in important metropolises, such as Prague or Brno, but also to newspapers from rural areas. The […]

Parallel Shifts. Theory of geo-architectural-climatic SK cloud

The title of the study – Parallel shifts: theory of geo-architectural-climatic SK cloud is a mixture of seemingly disparate categories such as scientific profoundness, seriousness, professionalism, amalgamated with genres of journalism and poetry and transformed into a level of pop-culture, imagination and graphic illustration. Especially the connection of specific concepts of “theory” and “cloud” is […]