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26th April 2019

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Sitting on Krakow’s Vistula River is Hotel Forum

Sitting on Krakow’s Vistula River is Hotel Forum. Its striking brutalist design by architect Janusz Ingarden was conceived in the 1970s at a time when the city wished to develop its potential as an international historical destination.

Krakow, one of Poland’s oldest cities in the country, was made its Medieval capital in 1038. Polish kings were crowned at Wawel Castle and its impressive medieval architecture has survived. At national level, Poland had began its application to list several cultural assets of the city. This included nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau as a UNESCO World Heritage site in the mid-1970s, shortly after UNESCO established the World Heritage Convention in 1972. Poland was one of the early signatories to this convention and took steps to nominate Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kraków’s medieval Old Town and the Wielicza Salt mine.

From conception to completion things did not run smoothly and Hotel Forum was hit by so many delays it didn’t welcome its first visitors until 1989 as profound changes were happening in Poland. By 2002 with overwhelming operating costs and international hotel groups opening in Krakow, it closed its doors and hasn’t been operating as a hotel since.

It did take on a second life as local creative groups used it officially and unofficially for events.

Today it remains a huge presence crying out for an imaginative developer.

Photo with thanks to @modarchitecture

Bohuslav Fuchs’, Czech architect whose life was

Bohuslav Fuchs’, Czech architect whose life was so impacted by the winds of political changes that swept across 20th Century Czechoslovakia.

This is his 1936 Petrákova Vila in Brno’s Pisárky district, a home for friends and business partners with whom he co-owned AKA, an interior design company. It’s considered an outstanding example of Functionalism.

Fuchs (1895-1972) is acknowledged as one of the most highly thought of Czechoslovakian architects of the interwar period but spent the last 25 years of his life stifled by the political leadership of his country.

In the 1920a he worked for Brno’s building authority rising to Chief Urban Architect. Fuchs, was also a member of the city’s ‘Group of Fine Artists’. In the late 1920s he chose to focus solely on his architectural practice which he’d already been operating from a villa he designed and lived in. Contributing to Brno’s 1928 Werkbund Exhibition with Josef Štěpánek, their ‘triple house’ was highly thought of and his practice thrived. Who knows how his career would have developed had Czechoslovakia not been invaded. Post-war with the Communists in power the practice closed and Fuchs became Dean of the Architecture faculty of Brno TU.

However, along with many artists and designers, he fell out of favour with the Soviet authorities, the country was in the grip of Social Realism, and Fuchs whose name was so strongly associated with Modernism, was dismissed from his post in 1960. He continued working albeit at a much less prominent level.

In 1968 during the Prague Spring he was honoured as a ‘National Artist’. This short-lived period stopped abruptly when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in August ‘68. After the Warsaw Pact invasion, Fuchs again suffered, the Communist ‘normalisation’ made sure to undo all the efforts of the Prague Spring activists and Fuchs survived by accepting small scale projects. In that sense he said better than others who were forced into exile.

Today his legacy is fully acknowledged and amongst his many impressive buildings is the Avion Hotel, Jakub Deml house, Zeman's cafe and the Třeština power plant.

Image Martin Strachoň / Wikimedia Commons CC BY SA 3.0 @bazi_cz

Kaunas Modernism at its finest, it may have been a

Kaunas Modernism at its finest, it may have been a long and difficult journey but today Iljinienė House has the recognition and protection it rightfully deserves.

This was built as a family home for railway engineer Jurgis and his wife Aleksandra Iljinas. Designed by renowned engineer and architect Arnas Funkas in 1933 on a plot sold to the family by their neighbour Dr Pranas Gudavičius. From the beginning it was designed as a family home with an opportunity to create income by combining it with flats to rent out.

After WW1, Kaunas (Kovno) became the ‘temporary capital’ of Lithuania with Vilna now in Polish hands. Modernist planners and architects spearheaded the city’s extraordinary growth between 1920 and 1939. Here was a new nation that has shaken off the shackles of the collapsed Russian Empire determined to be a best in class example of a modernist city, 1200 new buildings were completed. That all halted in 1939 with Lithuania in turmoil. On 20 March 1939, Nazi Germany's foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop presented an oral ultimatum to the foreign minister of Lithuania to return the ‘Memel Territory’, which which had been given to Lithuania after Germany’s defeat in WW1 or the Wehrmacht would invade Lithuania and the temporary capital city of Kaunas would be bombed. There is of course a lot more to tell about what happened and about the second ultimatum. The country was under Soviet occupation from June 1940 for a year when the Germans occupied it. Much has been written about the city’s large Jewish population of 35-40,000 people (one in four people in the city) who were murdered, amongst them were architects, engineers and designers. Only 2000 citizens returned after the war.

The story was somewhat different for the Lljinas family who left the city during the Soviet occupation and ’fled to Germany’. The unoccupied building was nationalised.

Post war, Lithuania was a Soviet satellite state and the building became home to various state organisations eventually belonging to the Fire Brigade.

Today the house has been returned to former glory - after falling into complete disrepair. Image Vilensija CC BY SA 3:0

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