Martin Strakoš: Behind the Ostrava Department Stores

The Antiquarian Bookshop and the Fiducia Club invite you to a guided tour with Martin Strakoš.

Behind the Ostrava department stores: ASO, Baťa, Bachner, Brouk and Babka, Textilie, Prior, and Nová Karolina alias Nová Fukušima - a guided walk

The meeting will take place on June 23, 2012, at 2:00 PM at Masaryk Square.

The lecture in the field, combined with a walk through the center of Ostrava, will focus on the department store as a specific architectural type, exemplified by several modernist buildings from the 1920s and 1930s (ASO, Baťa, Brouk and Babka, Textilie). The architects of these buildings, including Karel Kotas, Bohumír Čermák, Marie Frommerová, and Erich Mendelsohn, sought to express new forms of selling with appropriate architectural means. From more recent examples, the commentary will focus on the Prior department store (now Laso) from the 1980s, and finally, it will address the results of the international competition for the Karolina solution from 2000, the subsequent development competition, and the final outcomes in the form of the shopping center Nová Karolina, colloquially known as Nová Fukušima.