kruh spring 2021: Dialogues I

The twenty-first cycle of lectures organized by the KRUH association will focus on dialogues. During four spring and three autumn evenings, fourteen significant Czech and foreign guests will present various questions concerning contemporary architecture and related fields. This year, KRUH has invited, for example, Swiss architectural historian Philip Ursprung, Indian-Spanish architect Anupama Kundoo, and professor and architectural historian Rostislav Švácha. The first lecture of the cycle will be broadcast on the Facebook page of KRUH on Thursday, March 4, 2021, at 7:30 PM.
Last year, KRUH celebrated 20 years of its existence, and the celebration of this significant anniversary will also be reflected in this year's cycle of lectures, which will look back as well as forward. So far, KRUH has organized over 270 lectures, where audiences could listen to a variety of enriching topics and inspiring personalities engaged in architecture, as well as theory and fields closely related to architecture. In 2021, the association invites the most interesting guests who have appeared at KRUH over the past twenty years to once again present to the Czech audience and expand their presentations with other inspiring personalities or figures they would like to meet themselves.
“In the Dialogues cycle, we are interested not only in connecting fields related to architecture but also in the curatorial selection of significant and inspiring personalities. The dialogue among the guests will also represent a form of cooperation, which is more than necessary in today's world,” adds Marcela Steinbachová on the topic of the cycle.
The first lecture in the spring part of the cycle will open a dialogue between one of the most significant Czech architectural historians, Rostislav Švácha, and unique architect Svatopluk Sládeček, who mainly creates in the Zlín region and whose buildings are referred to as so-called figurative architecture. Their mutual conversation on the topic of the Chronic Unpopularity of Architecture and its Causes will focus on the unpopularity of modern architecture, the meaning of architecture, and its understandability in contemporary times. The evening will be accompanied by presentations of selected buildings not only by Svatopluk Sládeček.
Rostislav Švácha, as an art and architecture historian, university teacher, and professor, focuses his work on the architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries. In 2013, he received the Ministry of Culture Award for his contribution in the field of architecture and the Honor from the Czech Chamber of Architects. He is the author of essential books on modern, functionalist, and contemporary architecture and has long been involved in the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is an active member of the Club for Old Prague and the association for Beautiful Olomouc.
Svatopluk Sládeček studied design and architecture at the AAAD in Prague and shortly after completing his studies (1994) founded the New Work studio. He has received awards for some of his realizations in the Grand Prix contest of the Architects' Association (Municipal House in Šarovy, lookout tower on Brdo, interior of a villa in Kroměříž). The most notable public presentation of Svatopluk Sládeček's architectural work was the exhibition "Figurative Architecture for Beginners," which he presented in various forms in Zlín, Brno, Prague, Vienna, and Belgrade. In addition to running his architectural studio, he has been teaching at the Faculty of Architecture of VUT in Brno since 2016. His realizations include, for instance, a family house in Rousínov, Háj hotel in the White Carpathians, cabins in Zadní Telnice, or Open House in Fryšták.

In the following spring evenings, KRUH will present, for example, a dialogue between architect Marek Štěpán and Roman Catholic priest P. Petr Okapal, and in the May evening, a conversation between architectural historian Philip Ursprung and conceptual artist and professor of the basic principles of design, art, and architecture at ETH Zurich, Karin Sander, or in the June dialogue on climate change and its impacts on architecture, Indian-Spanish architect Anupama Kundoo and professor of environmental technology Matthias Schuler will meet.

Spring part of the Dialogues cycle:
Thu 4.3. 19:30, Rostislav Švácha and Svatopluk Sládeček
Thu 25.3., 19:30, Marek Štěpán and P. Petr Okapal
Thu 6.5. 19:30, Philip Ursprung/CH and Karin Sander/DE
Thu 3.6. 19:30, Anupama Kundoo/ES/IND and Matthias Schuler/DE

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