Jasan Burin - insights from the June lecture of the Circle

In the last lecture of the spring series "Us Abroad" organized by the Kruh association, architect, draftsman, and vintage car enthusiast Jasan Burin (*1929) presented his work. He has been active abroad since the mid-60s, particularly in the USA. The civic association Kruh is honored to provide a platform for an architect whose work is virtually unknown in the Czech Republic due to his long stay abroad.
Jasan Burin studied architecture in Brno at VUT under Bohuslav Fuchs, whom he later assisted. After relocating to Prague in 1956, he continued his education postgradually at the AVU School of Architecture under Jaroslav Fragner. During the period of mass emergence of creative groups at the turn of the 50s and 60s, he became a member of the artistic group Etapa. From the early 60s, as an employee of the national enterprise Konstruktiva, he contributed to the design of buildings for Czechoslovak embassies and the Czechoslovak pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. From 1965, he supervised the construction of the embassy in London, and after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he moved to the USA, initially designing mainly public buildings for the state of Indiana. In the early 70s, he began working at the University of Tennessee's School of Architecture in Knoxville. In 1974, he helped Central America, which had been affected by earthquakes, as part of a UNESCO program: with students, they created a new urban concept for the city of Managua in Nicaragua, for example. His lifelong interest in urbanism was also reflected in the futuristic EPCOT project at the University of Communications in Florida for the Walt Disney Company. In 1982, he contributed to Expo 82. He currently lives in Prague and serves as a visiting professor at the School of Architecture at Clemson University.
The lecture delivered for Kruh, o. s. was titled after his life credo, reflecting his professional ethics. He chronologically divided his talk into several parts, separated by his own drawing glosses. In the first section named Czechoslovakia 1960–1964, he projected as the first futuristic building the Elbe canal lock in Štětí, which he created for the national enterprise Hydroprojekt. He also presented unrealized designs for Czechoslovak embassies in Ghana and Brazil developed at the national enterprise Konstruktiva. In the next section, England 1965–1968, he spoke in more detail about his contribution to the Czechoslovak pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal (authors M. Řepa and V. Pýcha) and the building of the Czechoslovak embassy in London (authors J. Šrámek and co.), the construction of which he supervised. In London, he subsequently worked for the architectural office of R. Matthew and J. Marshall, where he dealt with urban proposals for so-called new towns or the issues of integrating new buildings into the historic core of the city (administrative building in Bath). His stay there became a starting point for his international career. After the arrival of the Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968 in Czechoslovakia, he decided to emigrate to the USA. During the Indiana, USA 1968–1970 period, he created the Grissom Memorial for James Associates, a monument to the lost astronaut in Mitchell, the Angel Mound Museum of Indian Culture in Evansville, and the Mather Museum in Bloomington. After moving to Tennessee, USA 1971–1982, he worked for Cideco assoc. on the Fox Den residential colony in Knoxville, where he also built his own house with a number of clever details. Here, he also realized, for example, the CC Bank in Clinton for GSCD Inc. A parallel section includes Florida, South Carolina 1973–1982, where he worked for BWSC assoc. on the partially realized EPCOT university project in Florida with a central spherical hall and utopian elements (such as camping towers, etc.). In South Carolina, he then designed the Radisson hotel, where he also contributed to the uniform designs for its employees. The section Expo 82, Experimental Houses 1982–2010 then showcased his experimental future houses with organic shapes named Xanadu for Expo 82 in Gatlinburg, the concept of which he is now further developing in collaboration with the architectural office Jiran Kohout architekti from Prague (recent competition Rockhouse, Xanadu 3, authors Burin – Jiran – Maio).
Despite the substantial length of the lecture, its author did not mention a significant part of his professional career, namely his teaching work at the university. However, this deficit was compensated for by the discussion with the audience after the lecture, which included questions about this engagement. As a supplement to the lecture, Jasan Burin exhibited in the NoD foyer a several-meter print of his project for the EPCOT university complex, which attracted considerable attention. Jasan Burin's lecture acquainted a broader professional audience with the work of a little-known architect in our country. The spring series thus symbolically progressed from the youngest architects to a representative of the oldest living generation. The Kruh association will continue the series "Us Abroad" in the fall of 2010.