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Abstract
This article examines carnivalesque activities as rebellious architectural pedagogies at two rural venues in Central and Eastern Europe between 1969 and 1990 – the Czech architectural commune “Školka” and the Serbian Village School for the Philosophy of Architecture. After the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Školka, an outpost of the state architectural practice Sial, emerged in a village outside the city of Liberec. Its informal educational model integrated play and humor with international architectural influences of the 1960s. Further south, charismatic teacher and architect Bogdan Bogdanović opened in Popović the Village School for the Philosophy of Architecture, replacing curriculum with lectures, workshops and performances where actors often exchanged roles with its audience. Embodying Mikhail Bakhtin’s characterization of carnivals – free interaction, eccentric behavior, méssaliances and sacrilege – these schools embraced their rural contexts and medieval folk traditions to create new models of both architectural education and practice.
Acknowledgments
The authors are indebted to Miroslav Masák for his recollections and generous help with this project, as well as to John Eisler, Václav Králíček, Jiří Suchomel and Emil Přikryl for their reminiscences. They are also grateful to Irena Fialová and Ivan Ristić for their insights, and to the staff members at the Architekturzentrum Wien, the Czech Technical University Archive and the National Technical Museum Prague for their assistance. Our thanks also go to Ljubiša Ajdić and Brane Drobnjak for their help with archival materials, as well as to Jane Neidhardt and Holly Tasker for their editorial advice and support throughout this project.
Notes
Notes
1 Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 122.
2 Bakhtin’s 1940 doctoral dissertation Rabelais and His World was published in Russian only in 1965. See Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).
3 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 123 (original emphasis).
4 Ibid., 124 (original emphasis).
5 Complaints from professional writers led the team to invite film director Pavel Juráček and Havel to collaborate on script revisions. Eventually, exhibition script writer Václav Jasanský won the script and architect František Cubr was awarded the architectural commission. On Masák’s collaboration with Havel, see Miroslav Masák, Tak nějak to bylo (Prague: Katt, 2006), 28.
6 Jiří Suchomel, oral interview with Marjanović, December 20, 2017; and Miroslav Masák, oral interview with Marjanović, December 21, 2017.
7 Václav Havel, Asanace, Hra o pěti jednáních [Redevelopment, A Play in Five Acts] (Munich: Obrys/Kontur, 1988; reprint Prague: Galaxie, 1990).
8 Školka members included Helena Jiskrová, Stanislav Švec, Jiří Špikla and Mirko Baum (1968); Dana Zámečniková, John Eisler, Milan Körner, Miroslav Tůma, Emil Přikryl, Martin Rajniš, Dalibor Vokáč, Zdeněk Zavřel, Petr Vad’ura and Jiří Suchomel (1969); Václav Králíček (1970); Michal Brix (1975); and Eva Eislerová (1976).
9 Hubáček won the 1969 International Union of Architects Auguste Perret Prize for the Ještěd tower. Rostislav Švácha, Sial, Liberec Association of Engineers and Architects, 1958–1990: Czech Architecture Against the Stream (Olomouc: Arbor Vitae and Olomouc Museum of Art, 2012), 48.
10 Masák, email to Rüedi Ray, October 7, 2017.
11 On historical influences and parallels, see Švácha, Sial, Liberec Association of Engineers and Architects, 53, 67 and 78; see also Vladimír Czumalo, “Končící Století/Fin-de-Siécle,” in Mašinisti/Machinists, ed. Miroslav Masák (Prague: Galerie Jaroslava Frágnera, 1996), 140–57.
12 Švácha, Sial, Liberec Association of Engineers and Architects, 74.
13 Ludmila Hůrková, “Pre-Sial and an Attempt to Humanize Architecture,” in ibid., 28.
14 Ana Miljački, The Optimum Imperative: Czech Architecture for the Socialist Lifestyle, 1938–1968 (London: Routledge, 2017).
15 Masák, email to Rüedi Ray, December 8, 2017 (Rüedi Ray translation).
16 Masák, oral interview with Marjanović, December 21, 2017.
17 Masák, email to Rüedi Ray, October 7, 2017 (Rüedi Ray translation).
18 Ibid.
19 Masák, email to Rüedi Ray, August 12, 2017 (Rüedi Ray translation).
20 Masák, email to Rüedi Ray, October 7, 2017 (Rüedi Ray translation).
21 Ana Miljački, “Playing in the Time of Normalization: Sial’s Školka Experiment and Architectural Dissidence,” in Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence, ed. Ines Weizman (London: Routledge, 2013), 67.
22 Masák, email to Rüedi Ray, December 8, 2017 (Rüedi Ray translation).
23 Masák, oral interview with Marjanović, December 21, 2017.
24 Masák, email to Rüedi Ray, October 7, 2017. Josef Šafařík, Člověk ve věku stroje [Man in the Age of the Machine] (Liberec: Severočeské nakladatelství, tiskárna: Liberecké tisky, 1969).
25 Mirko Baum, “On Bees and Bolts: Školka Sial – An Architects Commune in Czechoslovakia,” in Rescaling the Environment: New Landscapes of Design, 1960–1980 (East West Central: Re-Building Europe, 1950–1990, vol. 2), ed. Ákos Moravánszky and Karl R. Kegler (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2017), 103.
26 Masák, email to Rüedi Ray, October 7, 2017 (Rüedi Ray translation).
27 Masák, Tak nějak to bylo, 26.
28 Ibid., 28 (Rüedi Ray translation).
29 Masák participated in the 1967 Biennale in Paris and the 1968 Cultural Olympiad in Mexico City. Masák, oral interview with Marjanović, December 21, 2017.
30 Masák, Tak nějak to bylo, 28 (Rüedi Ray translation).
31 Sebastiano Brandolini, “Stavoprojekt Liberec Studio 02 Sial: Progetti 1972–1984,” Casabella 512 (April 1985): 4–13.
32 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 123 (original emphasis).
33 Masák, email to Rüedi Ray, August 8, 2017.
34 See Latinka Perović, “Bogdan Bogdanović: Dnevni i noćni čovek” [Bogdan Bogdanović: Daytime and Nighttime Man], in Bogdan Bogdanović, Glib i Krv (Beograd: Helsinški Odbor za Ljudska Prava u Srbiji, 2001), 2–10.
35 Gordana Korolija Fontana-Giusti, “Bogdan Bogdanović: Dissident in Life, Architecture and Writing,” in Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence, ed. Ines Weizman (London: Routledge, 2013), 33–45.
36 See Slobodan Selinkić, “Profile: Bogdan Bogdanović,” World Architecture Magazine of the International Academy of Architecture 9, no. 2 (1990): 28–41; and Bogdanović et al., Bogdan Bogdanović: Memoria und Utopie in Tito-Jugoslawien (Klagenfurt: Wieser Verlag, 2010), exhibition catalog for The Doomed Architect, March 5–June 2, 2009, Architecture Center Vienna, curator Ivan Ristić.
37 On Bogdanović’s pedagogical work, see Dragana Milovanović, “Die Lehre des Bogdan Bogdanović,” in Bogdan Bogdanović (Klagenfurt: Wieser Verlag, 2010), 40–45; Vladimir Kulić, “Bogdan Bogdanović: Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia, 1970–1980,” in Radical Pedagogies, ed. Beatriz Colomina, 2014, available online: http://radical-pedagogies.com/search-cases/e28-faculty-architecture-university-belgrade/ (accessed October 7, 2017); Branislav Folić, “The Contribution to the Research into the Role of Bogdan Bogdanović in the Creation of the New School of Architecture in Belgrade,” SPATIUM International Review 27 (August 2012): 19–25; and Ljubica Slavković, “The New School 1971–1973 and a Village School for the Philosophy of Architecture,” CZKD, December 29, 2015, available online: http://www.czkd.org/en/stance/the-new-school-1971-1973-and-a-village-school-for-the-philosophy-of-architecture/ (accessed September 30, 2017).
38 Bogdanović’s sketchbook references the Greek word semeion (sign), recalling contemporary semiotic discourses. Bogdanović’s archive is at the Architecture Center Vienna; for his sketchbooks, see box B19.
39 See Bogdan Bogdanović, Zaludna mistrija: doktrina i praktika bratstva zlatnih (crnih) brojeva [The Futile Trowel: Doctrine and Practice of the Brotherhood of Golden (Black) Numbers] (Bjelovar: Prosvjeta, 1984).
40 See Marina Abramović, Thomas McEvilley, Bojana Pejic, Toni Stoos, contribs., Marina Abramović: Artist Body, Performances 1969–1998 (Milan: Charta, 1998), 62–9.
41 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 72.
42 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 127.
43 Bogdan Bogdanović, “The Return of the Griffon: A Drawing Heuristic Game Modeled on Lewis Carroll,” Gradac 41 (July–August 1981): 5–12.
44 Ibid., 12 (Marjanović translation).
45 See Tomislav Longinović, Vampire Nation: Violence as Cultural Imaginary (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).
46 Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 39–40.
47 Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, 123.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., 122 (original emphasis).
50 In the Bauhütte (mason’s lodge), master masons, journeymen and apprentices lived and worked together, overseeing the construction of cathedrals.
51 Masák returned to the Technical University in Brno. Přikryl led the Prague Academy architecture program, Suchomel became founding dean of architecture at the Technical University of Liberec, Zavřel became dean at Czech Technical University, Rajniš became a successful architect and Baum taught at Aachen University. Eisler worked for Richard Meier in the United States, Jiskrová worked for Jaap Bakema in the Netherlands and Baum worked in Germany with Josef Kleihues.
52 A major retrospective of Bogdanović’s work was held at the Architecture Center Vienna in 2009 (see Milovanović et al., Bogdan Bogdanović); his work was also prominent in the 2018 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, see Martino Stierli and Vladimir Kulić, eds., Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2018).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Igor Marjanović
Igor Marjanović is the JoAnne Stolaroff Cotsen Professor of Architecture and Chair of Undergraduate Programs at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA. His scholarly and curatorial work examines the role of pedagogy – including books, drawings and other visual media – in the formation of new discourses and architectural culture at large. His publications include Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association (2015) and Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg’s Urban Vision (2010). He holds a Ph.D. from the Bartlett School of Architecture, a Master of Architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Bachelor of Architecture (Dipl. Ing. Arh.) from the University of Belgrade.
Katerina Rüedi Ray
Katerina Rüedi Ray is Professor at and was Director from 2002 to 2017 of the Bowling Green State University School of Art, OH, USA. She was Director of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture from 1997 to 2002. Her research connects modernism and education in art, design and architecture to critical social theory, focusing on globalization within capitalist and communist spheres. Her publications include Bauhaus Dream-house: Modernity and Globalization (2010), Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg’s Urban Vision (2010), Chicago Architecture: Histories, Revisions, Alternatives (2005) and Desiring Practices: Architecture, Gender and the Interdisciplinary (1996). She holds a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. from the Bartlett School of Architecture, a Diploma with Honors from the Architectural Association and a B.Sc. from the University of Dundee.