The reconstruction of Jurkovič's villa begins

Yesterday morning, the official handover of the construction site marked the beginning of the reconstruction of the Jurkovič villa in Brno's Žabovřesky. This occurred less than three years after it was acquired by the Moravian Gallery in Brno in 2006. The aim of the project funded by the so-called Norwegian funds is not only the rehabilitation of the entire area, including the restoration of the villa and the adjoining land, but also the preparation and implementation of a permanent exhibition and a research center documenting the life and work of architect Dušan Samo Jurkovič.

"This is a significant step for us towards fulfilling the mid-term concept of the Moravian Gallery in Brno, which plans to integrate architecture into our activities. We are also working on other projects related to this area, including the preparation of a permanent exhibition of Josef Hoffmann in Brtnice and the rehabilitation of the premises of the Governor's Palace in Brno," said Marek Pokorný, director of the MG, commenting on the start of the project.

The investor of the project is the Moravian Gallery in Brno. The main designer of the reconstruction is the firm TRANSAT Architekti, specifically Ing. Petr Všetečka, and the general contractor selected through a tender is the joint-stock company IMOS. The total budget for the project is 1,251,878 euros, which is approximately less than 35 million Czech crowns. About 30 million of this amount will go to the rehabilitation of the area, while the rest will be used for the establishment of the permanent exhibition and research center. The preparation of the exhibition is taking place concurrently with the reconstruction, and it should be accessible along with the villa by the end of 2010.
During yesterday's handover of the construction site, a detailed schedule of the works to be carried out was established, as well as a procedure for protecting the restored parts of the building. The surfaces in the villa (walls, windows, wooden elements, etc.) were largely restored in 2007 thanks to a special government grant of 2.5 million crowns, so it will be necessary to prevent damage during the construction.
The actual execution will begin with the reconstruction of the complex roofing system. In the first phase, scaffolding will be erected around the villa, and the entire house will be placed "under a tent." Subsequently, the roof will be dismantled, with individual tiles carefully labeled and numbered so they can be returned to the same place after the work on the roofing is completed. The execution of the installations in the rooms will also be quite complicated. The original colored decoration of the walls and other elements has been preserved beneath layers of later repainting, which is why the designers are carefully planning each intervention, aiming to lead wires and pipes along original routes wherever possible.
Similarly meticulous work will be carried out on other tasks, from insulating the building to modifying the garden or the surrounding wooden fence with a base. The MG will inform the public about the progress of the works regularly; among other things on www.moravska-galerie.cz.

ABOUT THE PROJECT
The project entitled the Center of Dušan Samo Jurkovič in Brno was included in the 3rd call for grants from the EEA/Norway Financial Mechanisms (the so-called Norwegian funds), specifically in the priority area "Preservation of European Cultural Heritage." Its goal is the exemplary rehabilitation of the protected monument and its accessibility to the public. It includes the establishment of the aforementioned permanent exhibition and research center of D. S. Jurkovič.
Particular emphasis is placed on the method of executing the reconstruction of the villa. Every step of the preparatory and execution works is carefully documented, and from the obtained materials, a model manual for reconstruction will be developed, which will serve as a guide in addressing similar restoration issues for protected buildings. Even during the construction, key steps will be made accessible to the public in the form of an online reconstruction, which is also part of the project, to be placed on the MG's website.

JURKOVIČ VILLA
The villa of Dušan Samo Jurkovič in Brno-Žabovřesky (Jana Nečase 2) is one of the most significant architectural monuments of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in Brno. Together with the implementations of Jurkovič's designs in Pustevny, Luhačovice, and the castle in Nové Město nad Metují, it forms the basis of the architect's preserved work in the Czech Republic. The importance the author himself attributed to this building is confirmed by the fact that the villa became an exhibit during an exhibition organized by the Art Friends Club from August 26 to September 20, 1906, as one large unique "gesamtkunstwerk."
Architect Dušan Samo Jurkovič built his family villa with an atelier close to the Emperor's Forest (the present-day Wilson Forest) according to his own design. The house was designed and constructed on the principles of the English country house "cottage," with a dominant two-story hall in the middle of the layout. It then entered architectural history along with the author's other works as a significant expression of the folklorically oriented Art Nouveau movement. The wooden elements on the facades, together with the roofing landscape, became an artistic expression of the building's essence and its initial orientation toward folk architecture. However, the wooden elements of Jurkovič's own villa have a considerably reduced form, and the house stands as a sovereign architectural expression of the Art Nouveau movement. In Central Europe, parallels can be found, for example, in Olbrich's buildings in Darmstadt, while in the Czech environment, it is probably the most consistent realization of the ideas of the British Arts and Crafts movement.
Dušan Samo Jurkovič lived with his family in his villa for just under 13 years. In March 1919, he sold the house and moved to Bratislava. In the following period, the villa underwent several changes. The Moravian Gallery in Brno acquired it in 2006, thus becoming the custodian of the fifth architecturally remarkable building designated for the presentation of artistic culture. This completed its efforts to create conditions for research, care, and mediation in this field in all its breadth and, by expanding its focus on architecture, it became the only art museum in the Czech Republic dealing with visual arts in a completely comprehensive manner.
In 2007 (exactly 101 years after its first opening), the MG opened the villa to the public, allowing visitors to see the condition of the villa's interiors firsthand. The cleared internal spaces were viewed by a total of 5,115 people during the twenty-three days of open doors (averaging 222 people per day).
At the end of 2007, in connection with the planned permanent exhibition in the restored Jurkovič villa, the Moravian Gallery in Brno purchased a total of sixty-one pieces of furniture from the workshop of this significant Slovak architect and designer. The furniture comes from the family chateau in Molitorov near Kouřim in the Central Bohemian Region, whose reconstruction took place between 1908-1909 according to Dušan Samo Jurkovič's plans, and part of the collection was exhibited in 2008 at the exhibition "Za patnáct."