For most Czech architects, theory of architecture is invisible. It’s not taught in schools, and maybe that’s one of the reasons it often gets mistaken for history. In the US, where Joan Ockman and Mary McLeod come from and teach, theory has gained a firm position within the university curriculum since the 1960s. It also became part of the work of renowned architects; for example Peter Eisenman – to name but one – whose reputation was not only due to the buildings he designed but also to his inspiring theoretical texts. Ockman and McLeod were asked about the relationship between architectural theory and practice, and thinking about this relationship in the last fifty years, by Michaela Janečková and Rostislav Švácha – the man who stresses he’s not a theorist but an architecture historian.

The final design concept for a shop on the edge of a housing estate in Seč, East Bohemia, was the result of an all‑day intensive studio workshop which examined dozens of alternatives. A prototype of this typology was already built in the nearby city of Heřmanův Městec, but here an apartment for the retailer was added. The shop is modelled after typical barn buildings – structures built on the outskirts of settlements – hence the distinct tall roof, the symmetrical front façades and the image of a house closed, oriented inside, because context doesn’t allow otherwise. As in other supermarkets there are no shop windows, just a glazed entrance. Full walls are necessary for displaying the goods. The top light filtering through the cluster of tie beams is the one special feature that gives the interior its atmosphere. The structural tectonics are visible on the outside as well as the inside; the materials used are informal.

V posledních týdnech jsme mohli sledovat kauzu odvolání ředitelů Národní galerie Praha (NG) Jiřího Fajta a Muzea umění Olomouc (MUO) Michala Soukupa, která nakonec vyvrcholila rezignací ministra kultury Antonína Staňka. Oficiálně zveřejněné důvody, které si vynutily okamžité odvolání obou ředitelů těsně před Velikonocemi – ještě před uzavřením účelově působících auditů –, nejsou moc přesvědčivé. O shrnutí situace se ve svém sloupku, publikovaném v ERA21 #03/2019, pokusil šéfredaktor časopisu Filip Landa.

Whenever power is discussed or written about, Michel Foucault has to be at least mentioned, and in the Czech context so does Havel’s The Power of the Powerless. But it is not only thanks to these distinguished authors that we sense power is invisibly spread everywhere and we all participate in it. The government machinery, whose not insignificant driving force are the “greengrocers”, might be our Foucaultean “shepherd”, but in the democratic system the administration of state power is legitimized by social consensus...

Preparing for an interview with three people representing different generational and professional views on architecture wasn’t easy. The male members of the Lasovský family welcomed us in Hřebenky, Prague, where they built a house together (and the entire street, in fact). The oldest one invited us to the table, the middle one brought desserts, and the youngest made coffee. The short interview morphed a passionate, two-hour discussion about the career of an architect of the same name but in different times.