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Cubist Architecture

Cubist architecture originated in the Czech Republic in the early 20th century. Czech architects were inspired by Cubist art and were the first to design original Cubist buildings. Pavel Janák was a pioneering Czech architect who outlined Cubist precepts in his 1911 essay "The Prism and the Pyramid". He and other architects like Gočár, Chochola, and Králíček designed buildings with crystalline and geometric motifs inspired by Cubism. However, Cubist architecture was controversial and short-lived, as many found the style too bizarre and expensive. The most famous examples that still stand include Králíček and Novotný's Kovařovic House and Emil Král

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359 views2 pages

Cubist Architecture

Cubist architecture originated in the Czech Republic in the early 20th century. Czech architects were inspired by Cubist art and were the first to design original Cubist buildings. Pavel Janák was a pioneering Czech architect who outlined Cubist precepts in his 1911 essay "The Prism and the Pyramid". He and other architects like Gočár, Chochola, and Králíček designed buildings with crystalline and geometric motifs inspired by Cubism. However, Cubist architecture was controversial and short-lived, as many found the style too bizarre and expensive. The most famous examples that still stand include Králíček and Novotný's Kovařovic House and Emil Král

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Cubist architecture

Chochola's houseThe Czech Republic has many claims to fame but one of its
greatest and most curious regarding the arts is the country's unique history of Cubist
architecture. Czech architects were the first and only ones in the world to ever design
original Cubist buildings.
The Cubism in art was born in Paris thanks to Pablo Picasso and was accepted by many
Czech sculptors and painters who travelled between Prague and Paris in that period. From
1910 Prague was a very important centre for Cubism and Pavel Jank, a Prague-based
architect who had trained in Vienna in that period, was inspired by Cubism. He had been
involved in a struggle with then leading architect Jan Kotra, a proponent of 'rational'
architecture. By contrast, Jank thought that architecture should be something that was
very creative.

Jank's bowlUntil then Jank had been a member of the Manes


Association of Fine Artists but he left to co-found the more avant garde Group of Artists and
soon began a new publication. In 1911, he wrote "The Prism and the Pyramid", an
influential essay outlining Cubist precepts in architecture. In 1911, he sketched crystals
from the National Museum's collection of mineralogy and tried to create something like a
'crystalline' architecture with many motifs of prisms and pyramids, very dynamic
architecture, closer to Expressionism than the rational architecture of Kotra's circle.
This style, Cubism in architecture, was accepted by only some people like architects Gor,
Chochola, Krlek and others. And the period was very short because many people were
against this new style. Some theoreticians said that it was a 'betrayal' of modern
architecture. Of course the buildings were expensive as well as 'bizarre' which is also why
much of the public was against it.
Cubist villas were both costly and demanding, given that most of them were made of brick,
which is difficult to cut into geometric shapes. Concrete was far more ideal as a material for
Cubist construction, since it could be poured into more dramatic geometric forms.
The most famous examples are Otakar Novotn and Emil Krlek's Kovaovic House along
Prague's Vyehrad Embankment,well-known Diamond House with its diamond-shaped motifs
along its faade and main portal, a famous streetlamp designed by Emil Krlek, which
stands on Jungmann Square.

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