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Druhý říjnový víkend nabídl studentům a pedagogům Ústavu české literatury FF MU možnost zúčastnit se již posedmé literárně-kulturní akce s názvem Literární toulky. Během 12.–14. října 2012 se cílem brněnských bohemistů stala hned dvě malebná města, a to Žďár nad Sázavou a Havlíčkův Brod.
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Both collective publications (Prefab houses 1: Fifty prefab housing schemes in the Czech Lands. A critical catalogue of the “Prefab house story” series of exhibitions and Prefab houses 2: History of housing schemes in the Czech Lands 1945–1989. A critical catalogue of the “Residence – prefab housing scheme: Planning, realization, housing 1945–1989” exhibition) are products of a broadly conceived interdisciplinary research project the deliverables of which included, inter alia, exhibitions in Prague and all regional capitals of the Czech Republic and which were awarded the prestigious Magnesia Litera prize in 2018 as an extraordinary feat in the field of professional and educational literature. In the reviewer’s opinion, they bring the first ever systematic attempt to periodize the prefab-based building projects in the Czech part of the former Czechoslovakia between the mid-1940s and the end of the 1980s, at the same time providing a multifaceted characterization based on a representative sample of fifty prefab housing schemes in Bohemia and Moravia. Each of them was subjected to a thorough artistic-historical analysis outlining the development of the housing scheme’s concept, providing brief information about its authors, describes its urbanistic concept, prefab technology used, and artifacts and decorations. Added to the above is a set of interdepartmental studies analyzing different aspects of the historical development of prefab housing schemes. The compact collective of authoresses and authors has succeeded in presenting the prefab housing schemes, no matter how similar they may seem, as a varied and dynamically developing phenomenon, which fact is underlined by excellent work with archival photographs and the generally outstanding graphic layout of the publications. The only critical comment the reviewer has is that the authors were so absorbed by the architectural aspect of the matter that they tended to overlook substantial changes of the socialist urbanism in Czechoslovakia.
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This paper is based on the research undertaken in 2020 as part of the restoration project for a historical building, located in the north of Bucharest. A house erected on the third decade of 20th century, inscribed on the National Inventory of the monuments is a genuine illustration of the Modernist style. The house was known as Villa Stern. after the name of the architect Harry Stern which designed and lived it, starting from the early 1930's. The building permit, indicates another name, that of the architect Leon Stern. Without any kinship with Harry, Leon Stern will become the author of some famous Modernist buildings. Also, the younger architect Harry Stern stands out a leading teacher in the local context of Bucharest. Another kind of data there are inside the house. Displayed in plain sight, the bas – relief Maternity and the ronde-bosse sculpture of the oldest couple – Adam and Eve. The sculptures bear the signature of a German artist with ethnic roots of Polish Jews, Arnold Cencinski, under the pseudonym Borgo Prund. The careful research of all written information, the repeated inspection of the house, in addition to discussions with other professionals have clarified the confusion of the names and they resized the architectural values of the urban dwelling of the time.
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The practice of isothermal protective glazing as a stained glass conservation measure, aims to reduce the impact of meteorological, pollution and biological factors on both the glass substrate and the paint layer, as well as limiting the detrimental effects on adhesives and consolidants used in stained glass restoration.The aims of this article are to draw attention on the problems involved when installing protective glazing and specific technological issues, the theme of energy efficiency and the importance of long term monitoring, through a study based on existing references in the glass conservation field and our own experience.
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This paper presents the effects of the research on the identity policies led by Macedonia’s government in 2006-2017. The historical method was used. This work is based on paper publications, as well as on the author’s experiences from several field trips to the Balkans (2013-2014). The aim of this article is to analyze the mechanism used by the ruling VMRODPMNE to create and strengthen national identity through architecture. The visual arts were always an important tool of transmission of political content. Many governments across the globe have started an ‘architectural policy’ with the purpose of building a nation: Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan being an example. In every case, architecture was part of the social engineering process. Macedonia’s identity policy was based on the concept of antiquization: an idea which assumes that modern Slav Macedonians are descendants of the ancient Macedonians. The government started transforming public space. The intention was to change its function and make it a part of a propaganda system. In the entire country, many structures were built. Large national flags, monuments of Alexander the Great and pseudoclassical buildings, were considered to be the best means of creating the ethnic Macedonian identity. Controversy over the ‘Skopje 2014’ Project caused a decline of support to VMRODPMNE and led it to lose power. The new social-democratic government started to change the policies which led to an agreement with Greece and admission to NATO.
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Every day we pass beside different urban art creations and while we are surprised by the beauty of them, some of them we disapprove considering them acts of vandalism and others we contemplate them due to the acts of criminal carelessness of their owners. Are these creations protected from the legal point of view? Is sufficient such protection? Do we need another approach? This are some questions which appear in connection to the urban art creations which catches us our eye and heart in the urban life: graffiti and historical monuments to which this present article tries to answer.
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The article aims to reflect on the reinterpretation of the vernacular heritage and its use as a starting point in the specific situation of inserting new buildings and functions into an existing cultural landscape. The support of this reflection is constituted by the very recent experience of a student design workshop held in Cincșor, a Saxon village in Brașov county, Romania, between 18 and 22 November 2019, by some of the teachers and students from years 2 and 3 of the Architectural Conservation and Restoration Section from Sibiu, within the Faculty of Architecture of UAUIM.
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The students will explore the village, the functional typologies, the inheritance from the past, the local cultural identity. They will identify the materials used in local buildings, as well as the local building thecnologies. Through this project, the students will propose an architecture whose structural and aesthetic logic will be a consequence of an adapted typology and of used materials, within the analysed cultural context. Local building materials will be used that can be transformed by craftsmen into inteligent assemblies, capable to give an answer to the nevironment factors. The students are invited to innovate, at functional level as well as at the Architectural language level. We intend to practice a contemporary architecture, not to copy the existing one
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The article analyses the concept of representation, formulates the notion of a representative square, and argues that these squares, according to their representational nature, can be of two types: the ones adapted for state ceremonies, mass commemoration of national holidays (large, with a lot of open space); the ones marking social identity (with a small open space, a monument). A square can be of both types. The hierarchical status of a square is understood as a more important position in relation to other squares. It is noted that squares are a key spatial tool for creating links between different urban structures. Although the architecture of squares is characterised by constant change and transformation, the genius loci remains. The idea of the city as a text is discussed, the importance of the aesthetics of the environment for representation is pointed out, and attention is drawn to possible trends in the reconstruction of squares, abandoning ideological monuments in favour of the possibility of social proximity, cooperation and self-expression, rather than unity on an ideological-political basis.
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Ovoga ljeta iskoristih jedan dio svoga godišnjeg odmora te ponovno obiđoh našu Ramu - moram priznati, nešto više njezine srednje i donje dijelove, negoli popularni Gornji kraj (premda se bližio blagdan Velike Gospe). Ujedno razlog i da se malo sklonim s užarenih mostarskih ulica na kojima je temperatura išla do 41 stupanj celzija. Nije to bio neki posebno dug boravak na prostorima ove slikovite općine te njezina gospodarskog središta, ali bijaše viđeno dovoljno, dodatno i kroz neobvezne razgovore s pojedinim žiteljima. Nažalost, nekih dragih ljudi više nema, i to me svaki put dočeka kao bolna nepovratna činjenica. Život nam tako nudi pregršt mogućnosti, ali ostavlja i neka vječna pitanja smisla. Uskoro će i 100. (obiteljska) obljetnica od doseljenja roda Brizar na područje Kolivreta i Paljika. Došli su s mojom prabakom na tu dobru zemlju. Do tada su živjeli na Gračanici blizu Rame, reklo bi se - na samo par koraka. Pripovijest kaže da su se starinom prezivali Ramljaci. Susjedi su im bili Meštrovići, Rajiči i Belje, isto rod starinaca. Danas je tamo ostala samo jedna obitelj Brizara. Skoro sve se od zadnjeg rata naovamo iselilo - što bi rekli: po bilom svitu. I to je, nažalost, ona bremenita realnost Hrvata u BiH koju, opet, dijele s druga dva naroda.
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At the end of the 13th century a hospital and a wooden chapel dedicated to St George were built in the northern suburb of Elbląg and replaced by a brick church in 1386. This temple burned down in 1400. In its ruins an intact Host was found, which was considered a Eucharistic miracle. Rebuilt in 1405, the church received the invocation of Corpus Christi and became a shrine known throughout Teutonic Prussia. From the middle of the 16th century until 1945, the Corpus Christi church was owned by Evangelicals from Elbląg. Inside,its Gothic and modern furnishings have been preserved. When the Red Army entered Elbląg in January/February 1945, the church was destroyed and lay in ruins.
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Complicated, abundant with plot twists history of the huge canvass depicting the battle of Racławice, began in 1894 in Lviv, and after many border changes and many years of oblivion and political obstacles culminated in 1985 in Nowe Miasto in Wrocław. Thirty-five years have passed since the ceremonial opening of the museum and the architecture of the rotunda is perceived primarily from the angle of its purpose – the “seat” of the Panorama. Both elements – the building and the painting – hold an established positon of the most important tourist attractions of Wrocław. However, when one looks back at the decades before the new building was erected and the public was able to admire the illusionist painting presenting the Racławice battlefield, a change in the perception of Panorama by the public the art critics is noticeable. It can likewise be traced how across nearly 100 years the popular medium became national heritage. This shift is also reflected by the architecture: at the turn of the 19th and 20th century the public viewed the Racławice Panorama in an unheated rotunda, built hastily as a frame construction. Along with political changes and increasing importance of this national memento from Lviv, efforts have been made to exhibit it in a representational, modern facility. Long absence of the Panorama contributed to the rise in its meaning and, as a result, to its triumphal return and recognition among the general public. The modern rotunda, which stood unfinished for many years, played significant role in this process, physically visualizing the absence of the painting. In the meantime, many concepts regarding the building appeared; its visual form and functional solutions influence the perception of the painting to the present day.
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This article discusses how the views about the heritage of Egyptian culture were shaped in the minds of the European participants of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. The origins of European Egyptology are considered. The extensive contribution of the Arab-Islamic culture of Egypt, which retained both the archaic traces of ancient Egypt and the traditions of Hellenistic and Christian Egypt, into this process is analyzed. The term “Napoleonic Egyptology” is introduced. We defined it as a system of authentic written and visual sources that had a major influence on the initial perception of the ancient Egyptian culture and became the basis of subsequent Egyptological studies carried out by special institutions and destined to help Europeans to have a better understanding of the value of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Of particular interest is how the cultural layers of Egyptian culture of that time either stood out or merged in the image of the East that was developed by the Europeans who took part in the Egyptian campaign. It is emphasized that scholars who accompanied Napoleon’s troops had no idea of any connection between the ancient (Egyptian) and modern (Islamic) components of the regional culture. This hypothesis is substantiated by the structure of the book “Description of Egypt” with its separate volumes devoted to Egyptian antiquities and the Islamic Egypt. In this work, the images of ancient Egypt and modern East are parallel. The idea largely underpinned the evolution of European studies of the ancient Egyptian civilization.
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The article, based on newspaper materials and oral recollections about Obninsk, the city of atomic science in the 1960s, explores how the Soviet ideology in its postwar version functioned in a small community of a newly built city, where the task of creating both an urban space and urban social environment was of paramount importance. Following the ”third wave” of Soviet studies, the author “takes seriously” Soviet ideological clichés and such activities sanctioned from above as volunteer tending of urban green spaces and amateur gardening. Using the poststructuralist interpretation of discourse by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the author identifies two main discourses, each offering its own version of urban sociality and urban identity, and both being components of the Soviet urbanism of the 1960s. The “garden city” discourse is formed by gardening metaphors, institutions, and activities. In this discourse, a city resident is any person involved in the care for urban space and, above all, in growing trees and flowers in communal spaces. The articulations of this discourse are presented in abundance in the Soviet public space of the 1960s. The data shows that participation in such activities gave some Obninsk residents a significant experience of collective activity, in other words, it played a significant role in creating the sociality of the young city. The “city of science” discourse is specific to Obninsk, the city of scientific and technical intelligentsia. Within the framework of this discourse being a city resident means being an expert in the field of science and technology and offering one’s own ideas about how the growing city should look like. Both discourses referred to the utopia of communist urbanism, but emphasized its different aspects, namely, social and technological ones: unity in a common concern for one’s living space and scientific and technological progress that should provide the means to create a communist Garden of Eden.
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The scholars who analyzed the mural paintings of St. Elijah Church on the outskirts of Suceava proposed several identifications for the characters included in the votive composition and, consequently, different dating for the frescoes. Besides Stephen the Great (the building’s founder, identified as such also by the dedicatory inscription) and his son Bogdan, the third male character (having his face and name cancelled out and later repainted) was identified as either the founder himself, another of his sons, his grandson Stephen IV (“Ştefăniţă”), or even an “18th-century or a difficultly-identifiable prince.” After the restoration process, it was established that the third character was inserted into the votive composition at the same with the repairing of the church vandalized during the 1538 Ottoman campaign, and that this third character himself was the commissioner of the renovation. His name (still readable) and its later cancelling-out, explainable within the historical context, allowed his identification with Stephen V “Locust,” a grandson of the church’s great and holy founder, who promoted thus his claim of direct descent through his epithet “the Elder” and through his restoring gesture. Subsequently, the votive composition in St. Elijah Church is an important source for recovering the memory of a forgotten ruler in Moldavia’s history.
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One of the rocks employed extensively in the 19th century in the center of Braşov is the volcanic tuff. This was used both for complex components with high artistic value and for functional purposes, from monumental columns of representative buildings to socle veneers of modest houses. The tuff’s mineralogical properties determine both its type of degradation and intervention methodology in restoration works. Following the observations on volcanic tuff elements in the above-mentioned area and the restoration of some components made of this rock, several general and common features of volcanic tuff were identified. This essay presents as well the main types of restoration processes and the manner of approaching theoretically the most important of them.
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The article deals with the monuments of the Peter the Great’s epoch (dating to the period between the late XVII century and the first quarter of the XVIII century) existing in the functioning and abolished monasteries of the Olonets Eparchy founded in 1828, which have not been previously studied in Russian historiography. The main sources for the study were property inventories, clerical documents from the funds of individual monasteries and the Olonets and Novgorod ecclesiastical consistories, income and expense books, the published records of the meetings of the Imperial Archaeological Commission, as well as the local history literature of the XIX and the early XX centuries. The paper for the first time summarizes the surviving written evidence of stone and wooden churches built in local monasteries during the late XVII century and the first quarter of the XVIII century, and some monastic relics associated with Peter the Great and his time. The monks received sacred vestments and vozdukhs (veils) made of expensive imported fabrics, richly decorated liturgical books, bells, and special gifts (a reliquary cross, cast-iron cannons, wooden chairs made by the monarch) from the tsar and his relatives. It turns out that of all the many Peter the Great’s legacies only few churches in the functioning monasteries of St. Alexander of Svir and St. Alexander Oshevensky as well as some objects of that glorious epoch that ended up in Soviet museums have survived to this day.
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The 2019 archaeological expedition of the National Museum of the Republic of Karelia explored the territory of the Martial Waters resort in order to search for the remains of a complex of buildings dating back to the first half of the XVIII century. The works revealed the intact cultural strata in the settlement, which can be correlated with the Petrine stage of its history in the first quarter of the XVIII century. According to the archival and bibliographic materials, the palace of Peter the Great, the mineral springs and a courtyard area were located in this place. The archaeological works made it possible to localize the spread of the cultural layer, to determine the level of its preservation, and evaluate the prospects for further research. The archaeological pit showed the presence of a fascine layer covered with boards. The absence of traces of buildings and any other objects does not diminish the importance of the surveyed area for understanding the construction history. Future excavations are likely to reveal some artifacts from the period when the near-water sources of Peter the Great’s Palace were fully functional.
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Review of: Victoria Donovan. Chronicles in Stone: Preservation, Patriotism, and Identity in Northwest Russia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. 246 pp. ISBN 9781501747878.
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The main aim of the present paper is to present the latest achievements in the process of protection of the applied art which was a part of post 1950s architecture in Poland. During the period 1945–1990 many buildings were adorned with different applied art forms: sgraffito, wall paintings, mosaics and other art techniques. The research focuses on the transformation of the society’s approach to applied art after a period of neglect and different forms of protection. In many cases applied art forms like mosaics and ceramic artworks became longer lasting elements than the architecture which they originally adorned. After the demolition of modernist constructions, artworks are frequently transferred to new architecture. That process proves that vita (architecturae) brevis, ars longa.
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