In his 92nd year, architect Otakar Binar, the author of the interior of the Ještěd hotel, passed away

Liberec – At the age of 92, architect Otakar Binar has passed away, who, among other things, was the author of the interior of the Ještěd hotel. Together with architect Karel Hubáček, he became a founding member of the world-renowned architectural studio SIAL. The news of his passing was announced today by Liberec Governor Martin Půta (Mayors for the Liberec Region) on his Facebook profile.

Binar was born on June 17, 1931, in Jaroměř. According to the website Memory of Nations, he decided as a child that he would become an architect. He ultimately studied architecture at UMPRUM in Prague from 1952 to 1958. After school, he joined the Stavoprojekt in Liberec in Karel Hubáček's studio, the author of the hotel and transmitter at Ještěd.

"Hubáček was my lifelong and only boss. I spent my entire productive life with Hubáček," Binar told Memory of Nations. Together in the 1960s, they founded SIAL, which stands for the Association of Engineers and Architects in Liberec. During the period of normalization, SIAL was able to respond to modern European trends, resulting in several prominent figures in Czech architecture.

In addition to Ještěd, Binar and Hubáček also contributed to projects such as the Máj cinema in Doksy or the House of Culture in Teplice. However, Ještěd is his most famous work. "For his contribution to the realization of the Ještěd mountain hotel, Otakar Binar received the Governor's Honor in 2008. Honor his memory," Půta added.

The Ještěd hotel and transmitter is one of the most original architectural works in the Czech Republic. The unique construction, for which Karel Hubáček received the prestigious international Perret Prize, has been a national cultural monument since 2006, and people chose it as the Czech building of the century.

"Ještěd was exceptional for its time in that a comprehensive design, including interiors, was developed. This had previously only been done for embassies; hotels were typically furnished with standard furniture afterward," Binar stated in 2013.

The uniqueness of the building was enhanced by the fact that other prominent artists of the time, such as glassmakers Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, contributed to the furnishing of the interiors alongside him. Dishes and some textile accessories were made based on designs by Karel Wünsche, the author of the grille placed in the hotel corridor is Jaroslav Klápště, and the tapestry on the wall of the lounge was created by Vladimír Křečan.

The furniture designed by Binar is also unconventional; for instance, in the lounge, he used a contrasting combination of a black table with an ebony imitation and white leather chairs. He was partly inspired by the exceptional nature of the building. "There were materials here that were not completely common for that time. The construction technology was also not traditional – brick and wood. So the wood would be, at least as it seemed to me, a foreign element here. So if I used it, it was black to lose the character of the wood," he described. Many consider the furniture designed by Binar to be timeless.