The main purpose of the workshops newbuild is the servicing and maintenance of large farm machinery and equipment. It is located on a farm with a biogas plant in the village of Opatov near Svitavy. Shapes and features of traditional farm buildings, like gabled roofs and a distinctive ridge skylight, inspired the simple and partly translucent form. Even though referencing local traditions, the newbuild is not like anything built for similar purposes. Offices and facilities for farm staff are also housed inside.

Current job offers for young architects in the private sector (source: Archiweb.cz, earch.cz, April 2020) repeat the same cliches again and again. These empty phrases conceal unclear working conditions, unsatisfactory wages and minimal social security. But what else should the employers be writing in their ads if the real working conditions can only be discussed behind closed doors?

Every architect knows the specifics of the job. There was no data, however, to confirm the collective experience of the current working conditions in the Czech Republic. We now present the most significant results of an extensive survey conducted among university educated architects, between the ages of 22 and 35, based in the CR. The fact that we received 1221 valid responses proves how timely the subject matter was.

As the popular Czech saying goes, statistics is a science giving us invaluable data. But the colorful details of real life rarely fit neatly into charts and tables. To fully understand an issue we need both hard data and personal stories. We approached and conducted interviews with nine participants of the working conditions survey. We wanted to paint a colorful picture of life’s stories and experiences, so we’ll introduce you to architects with young children, architects running their own offices, freelancers, employees, and those who made their own way and juggle several activities or are leaving architecture altogether, or are leaving the Czech Republic to practice architecture abroad.

While it might appear like future architects will do everything except build houses, the opposite is actually true. A beautiful house on a specific site as the final product of the architect's efforts will remain. But one thing which is changing already, and will most likely continue changing more dynamically still, is the multilayered process of designing and building a house and the great creative potential it offers. The architect doesn’t have to just be the designer of a particular product, wielding ultimate power over the final details. In some cases they can serve as a mediator, enabling a solution to be realised. The two options are not mutually exclusive.

We all have experiences that formed our work and our development. So do architects. It makes for an interesting exercise — to pause and look back sometimes, to try and figure out why our paths took exactly one turn and not the other. This is how we occasionally discover a detail — an encounter, event, accident — which we hadn’t even noticed before, or hadn’t taken seriously. Shifting attention to these moments and analyzing them can be helpful in finding new means of expression.

The following text is my personal testimony based on my eight years of experience from the world of freelancers. I started my freelancing journey with jewellery making while still in university. Three years after graduation, architecture joined. Sure, the highs were pleasant, but I always learnt more from the lows. I was neither a brilliant student, nor some entrepreneur’s daughter, but I could always find a way where no one else could. I don’t take a no as a form of rejection, rather as a handy instruction as to how to get to a yes. Maybe you’ll be reminded of your own beginnings after reading my story, or it will make you smile, or simply pour new energy into your veins.

When considering the structure of the human body, we can often find many analogies to architecture. For example, we can perceive the body as a system of interconnected arches. A strong linking element can be found in verticality and the related need to reckon with gravity. Fundamentally human, the upright posture is where the spine takes on the function of the vertical axis of our body.

We won’t be thinking of the architectural profession just as the practice of designing and building houses much longer. That much has become apparent lately. A significant redefinition of the discipline is under way — the working process is changing, even if architectural thinking stays the same. We reached out to a wide range of organizations, who discover new working processes, and asked how they reflect architecture in their activities, how they think of it in relation to their work, and whether the outcome of their activities is marked in any way by their architectural education. The resulting collage of answers is a guidepost pointing to the many directions architectural graduates have from which to choose.

The song “It’ll be white or black, grey at the most”, followed a read manifesto made from fragments of conversations between architects and clients. The lyrics were composed from excerpts of emails, friends’ stories, or dialogues from studios. The song was originally made for the Ta Architektura presentation, organized in March 2015 at the Prague Trade Fair Palace by the Kruh association. Kapitán Jedůvka composed the music and also accompanied the recital with his beatbox stylings. In 2017, a music video for this song was made for the “Dear Architects…” exhibition in Architecture Gallery Brno.

Čirá protipožární skla jsou díky své požární odolnosti, tepelnětechnickým vlastnostem a světelné propustnosti materiálem používaným architekty v budovách, kde předpisy nařizují určitý stupeň požární odolnosti a kde jsou požadovány přirozené světlo, dobrá viditelnost a tepelně-vlhkostní mikroklima, jako jsou např. hotely, školy, nemocnice, nákupní střediska, administrativní budovy atd. Protože jde o materiál s rozdílnými mechanickými a tepelnými vlastnostmi, je možno na jedné straně využít jeho spojovacích mezivrstev k vytvoření vícevrstvé struktury pro zvýšení jeho únosnosti a požární odolnosti, na druhé straně však při jeho nevhodném použití mohou vzniknout nadměrné finanční náklady v důsledku jeho výměny. To dokazuje i příklad nesprávně osazeného vícevrstvého skla ve veřejné budově.

Standard negrafických informací 3D modelu (SNIM) je datový standard (DS), jenž vznikl z důvodu potřeby dosažení co největší kompatibility výstupů jednotlivých dodavatelů, kteří BIM modely vytvářejí, a to především z pohledu informačního obsahu. Pouze standardizovaný BIM model může být následně zpracován dalšími aplikacemi určenými pro rozpočtování, simulace, správu, údržbu a podobně. Standardizovaná forma a obsah výstupu jsou pro další strojové zpracování zásadní.

On the slope overlooking Prague main train station, across the street from the University of Economics campus on Winston Churchill square, two new office buildings, Churchill I and II, and an apartment building, Rezidence Churchill, were completed this year. This means that another overlooked brownfield has been connected into the urban fabric and the pedestrian network. Located on the north end of Italská street, the project is the second phase of the 2009 residential complex constructed between Kunětická and Dudova. The two office buildings line Winston Churchill Square from the west, with the corner building culminating in an eight-story tower.

Rezidence Churchill stands right at the meeting point of the calm residential development and the bustling mixed-use development along Italská street. The original design idea, working with a gradient starting in a smaller, residential scale close to Riegrovy sady park and ending with larger office volumes on Winston Churchill Square, remains palpable. Gaps between individual buildings allow for valuable visual links to Vltava’s left bank. A pedestrian street coming from the square cuts through the building’s ground floor and will eventually form a connection to the main train station underpass.