KOTVY MAY PRIORITIES

An extraordinary week-long housing exhibition organized by the civic association Za krásnou Olomouc will showcase fifteen of the most significant Czech department stores, whose designs and realizations played an irreplaceable role in Czech architecture in the 1960s and 1970s. This includes not only the most famous objects like Kotva and Máj, but also regional department stores in Pardubice, Ústí nad Labem, and Plzeň. Alongside full-range priorities, the House of Housing Culture in Prague, the fashion and accessories-specialized Don in Hradec Králové, the largest houses of production and consumer cooperatives, and the no longer existing Liberec shopping center Ještěd have also earned their place.

In the context of Olomouc, however, special attention - and a corresponding part of the exhibition - will be dedicated to the building of the local Prior. Thus, the exhibition KOTVY MÁJE, which was first introduced to the public in 2011 at the VŠUP Gallery in Prague, receives the expanded title KOTVY MÁJE PRIORY. The exhibition will be accessible on three days, each within the accompanying program. Lectures with an art-historical focus will be complemented by perspectives from a sociologist or psychologist, and valuable testimonies will be given by witnesses in a debate with architectural historian Rostislav Švácha. A detailed program can be found by visitors at http://www.krasnaolomouc.cz/ and http://www.facebook.com/pages/Za-kr%C3%A1snou-Olomouc/212560515506020?sk=wall

One of the goals of the project KOTVY MÁJE / Czech Department Stores 1965-1975, which besides the exhibition includes a publication of the same name, is to showcase the palette of approaches to solving the typological task of a department store in then Czechoslovakia, whether it be the investor's ambitions, the architects' approaches and positions, the circumstances of project development and realization, or the concept and construction of the buildings themselves. Selected objects also characterize the tendencies of contemporary architecture and their reflection and development in domestic conditions. Through comparisons of the current state of the buildings and their then or conversely future-considered forms, the original architectural values are confronted with contemporary approaches. This is most prominently evident in the case of the Liberec shopping center Ještěd, replaced by the Forum Liberec center. Another goal of the project is, in this context, to continue the societal debate about the meaning of protecting and respecting original buildings, which have become an integral part of the history of Czech architecture and the collective memory of our society, as well as about the significance and possibilities of their transformations.

The mentioned publication follows the basic line of the exhibition. In addition to rich pictorial documentation, it offers text profiles of individual objects. The focus of the book is studies on the Prague Máj and the Prior in Pardubice, which aim to be a deeper probe into the architecture of department stores from the late 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. Alongside other theoretical articles, there is also a comic "Trips with ČSSA / 02" about the Máj department store - the work of renowned visual artist and rapper Vladimir 518. The publication, which includes 191 photographs and drawings, will be available for purchase on-site during the exhibition.