History of Architecture at FA CTU - Database of Personalities and Buildings

On the internet address http://dejiny.fa.cvut.cz, a new, clearer version of the database of study materials was launched in 2012. This version concentrates information about selected personalities, groups, and buildings from the history of architecture of the 19th to 21st centuries in the form of encyclopedic entries. Creators and groups can be linked together through a timeline or a relational network. The database allows full-text searching through a filter or categorization into thematic units (e.g., buildings by year, author, country, typology, location, etc.).
The study materials provide users with a new perspective on the history of architecture - the interconnected databases offer a more active approach compared to traditional rather passive and memorization-based forms of study (lectures, books, etc.), allowing students to tailor the system to their own nature, level, or stage of study, etc. The interactive nature of the materials "immerses" users in the issues and enables a broader, more general (less predetermined by teaching) view of historical movements.

The object database underwent a comprehensive revision in 2012, including updates and the addition of existing records as well as the creation of entirely new ones. At the beginning of 2013, it contains approximately 1,100 entries.
A detailed review was also conducted on the personalities database. This involved the addition, correction, and updating of the existing approximately 170 records, primarily focusing on the establishment of about 140 new records, where the researchers emphasized not only the basic encyclopedic data but also the level of interpretation of the work of the selected creator. The combination of the revision and the addition of both databases resulted in a significantly "denser" information source, providing valuable (and mostly otherwise unavailable in Czech) information to architecture students and the wider professional public.
(e.g., Ammann; Asplund; Baeza; Baillie Scott, Bakema; Barry; Bauersfeld; Baudot; Bel Geddes; Berkel; Bill; Bonatz; Bos; Brinkman; Broek; Calatrava; Coignet; Colombo; Cook; Coop Himmelb(l)au; Costa; Crompton; Dischinger; Domenig; Duiker; Ecole de Nancy; Eiffel; Erskine; Frankl; Frey; Freyssinet; Friedman; Garnier; Gehry; GIAP; Giesler; Graves; Gray; Greene; Grimshaw; Hadid; Hansen; Harrison; Herron; Herzog; Herzog and de Meuron; Hitler; Holl; Holzmeister; Hood; Chalk; Chareau; Isozaki; Jencks; Jenney; Jiřičná; Kaplický; Kikutake; Klenze; Klotz; Koenig; Koolhaas; Kreis; Krier; Kroll; Kurokawa; Labrouste; Lautner; Libeskind; Lutyens; Mackay Hugh; Maki; Makovecz; March; Maymont; Meier; Merrill; Meuron; Miralles; Monier; Moore; Morris; Moser; Murcutt; Nash; Nelson; Noguchi; Nouvel; Noyes; OMA; Otaka; Otto; Papanek; Peichl; Pelli; Periand; Portzamparc; Prix; Ragon; Reich; Rimpl; Roche; Ruskin; Safdie; Sagebiel; Semper; Schinkel; Schlaich; Schultze-Naumburg; Owings; Sitte; Siza; Skidmore; Smirke; SOM; Sottsass jr.; Soufflot; Stern; Sullivan; Superstudio; Swiczinsky; Taller de Arquitectura; Team 4; Tessenow; Torroja y Miret; Troost; Viollet-le-Duc; Vlugt; Voysey; Wallot; Webb; UNStudio; Zumthor, etc.)
Database records will continue to be supplemented and refined...

An integral part of the project was also the expansion of the library's holdings at the institute 15113 with significant, primarily foreign monographic publications focused on architecture of the second half of the twentieth century and contemporary works - see the e-catalog at http://knihovny.fa.cvut.cz.
(e.g., Jean Nouvel by Jean Nouvel; Frei Otto. Complete Works; Moshe Safdie 1 and 2; Neutra Complete Works; Case Study Houses; Paul Rudolph. The Florida Houses; The Schools of Herman Hertzberger; Team 10; E. G. Asplund 1885-1940; The Story of Post-Modernism. Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture; Project Japan, Metabolism talks; Raumplan versus Plan Libre; Erich Mendelsohn. Complete Works; Yes is More; The Architecture of Glenn Murcutt; Bow Wow - Behaviorology; Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan; Topologies: The Urban Utopia in France, 1960-1970; Renzo Piano. Complete Works; Grimshaw Architecture: The First 30 Years; Foster + Partners: Catalogue; Zaha Hadid: Complete Works, 1979-2009; Louis Sullivan: Creating a New American Architecture; Ernst May 1886-1970; Morphosis: Recent Works (DVD); S M L XL; John Lautner 1911-1994. Disappearing Space; Erich Mendelsohn 1887-1953. The Analytical Visionary; Pierre Koenig 1925-2004. Living with Steel; Richard Meier and Partners. White is the Light; R. M. Schindler 1887-1953. An Exploration of Space; Richard Neutra 1892-1970. Survival through Design; Renzo Piano 1937. The Poetry of Flight; Jean Nouvel 1945. Giver of Forms; Josef Hoffmann 1870-1956. In the Realm of Beauty; Zaha Hadid 1950. The Explosion Reforming Space; Charles and Ray Eames 1907-1978, 1912-1988. Pioneers of Mid-century Modernism; Félix Candela 1910-1997. The Mastering of Boundaries; Tadao Ando 1941. The Geometry of Human Space; Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities; Herman Hertzberger, Lectures for Architecture Students; Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations; Coop Himmelb(l)au. Complete Works; Karel Pařík; Special Details; Serpentine Gallery Pavilions; PreFab Houses; Give a Damn Design Like You II, etc.).

The preparation of texts in the databases in 2012 involved Petr Vorlík, Pavel Škranc, Hubert Guzik, Klára Brůhová, Anna Kašíková, Klára Mergerová, Eva Bortelová, Patrik Hocke, Blanka Kynčlová, Jan Zikmund, Jakub Bacík, etc. The realization of the project was made possible by the FRVŠ grant no. 738/2012, which follows the FRVŠ grant no. 1215/2010 (researcher and author of the concept Petr Vorlík).