Zprávy památkové péče 2019, 79(3):245-260 | DOI: 10.56112/zpp.2019.3.03

In the new residential area. The buildings of architect Karel Láník in Brno-Královo Pole in the 1920s

Pavla Cenková

NPÚ ÚOP v Brně

Architect Karel Láník, a forgotten figure in Brno interwar architecture, was the focus of a 2016 biographical study from the same author. It appears that the work of lesser-known architects involved in the dynamic construction in Brno in the 1920s has a wider scope than previously anticipated. Particularly in the case of Karel Láník, new facts have been discovered, especially in association with his cooperation with the Public Benefit Building and Housing Cooperative for Královo Pole and its Surroundings (Obecně prospěšným stavebním a bytovým družstvem pro Královo Pole a okolí), for which he designed numerous family and apartment buildings. The present article, narrowly focused on the works of Karel Láník in the Brno district of Královo Pole in the 1920s, has the character of a micro-probe and allows for a more detailed analysis of individual buildings and the historical and social circumstances of their origin. It extends the knowledge of the architect's work and, using his cooperation with the Královo Pole Cooperative as an example, maps the activities of numerous housing cooperatives that were active at the time.
The Public Benefit Building and Housing Cooperative for Královo Pole and its Surroundings was established on the basis of federal law on 25 May 1919 in order to ensure affordable housing for its member group. Karel Láník began working with the cooperative from the very beginning, essentially becoming its "court" architect. The cooperative's building activity varied in relation to the availability of state building assistance: it culminated between 1922 and 1923, when the legal conditions were most favorable. Even though the second half of the 1920s saw somewhat of a decline, new buildings continued to emerge.
The article presents a group of Láník's apartment buildings built for the Královo Pole Building and Housing Cooperative, most of which were concentrated in the area of Slovanské Square and its surroundings which was the center of the newly built representative center of Královo Pole. These include the following buildings in particular: block of five apartment houses at Purkyňova 1925/71 to 1929/79 (1920-1921), corner house at Husitská 1283/14 - Bulharská 2 (1922-1923), state post office employee housing at Kartouzská 225/6 (1922-1923), corner house at Skácelova 1356/4 - Ruská 2 and neighboring house at Ruská 1335/4 (1923-1924), tenement house at Královopolská 2713/149 (1927-1928), and corner house at Skácelova 1645/30 and 32 - Mečířova 1a (1927-1928). The article also provides information on several of Láník's tenement houses in Královo Pole, the investor of which was the city of Brno: municipal apartment building at Skácelova 1253/2a - Těšínská 2483/1 (1922-1923) and three municipal tenement buildings at Bulharská 1325/53, Bulharská 1323/59, and Bulharská 1324/61 (1923-1924), used to accommodate workers of the nearby Královo Pole municipal brick factory.
Probably the most ambitious project of the Královo Pole Cooperative was to build the "new residential area" situated between today's Dobrovského, Charvátská, Vodová and Vacková streets. This was a uniformly conceived colony of 39 family houses that represented the contemporary ideal of modern family housing. The construction was divided into two construction phases: the first 20 houses were built between 1922 and 1923, the remaining 19 between 1923 and 1924. The colony was made up of several typified houses whose varying layout and formal designs accommodated the different demands and financial possibilities of their applicants. During the construction, a popular type of semi-detached house was utilized, in which two uniformly conceived houses were built as semi-row units side by side and contained identical but mirror-inverted housing units.
New buildings, the investor of which was The Public Benefit Building and Housing Cooperative for Královo Pole and its Surroundings and or to a lesser extent the city of Brno (or the local committee in Královo Pole), were created primarily to mitigate the post-war housing crisis. Most of all, such buildings had to be functional and not very expensive, and they also had to comply with the limitations of a law regulating construction activities that put conditions on state building aid, the acquisition of which was crucial for this type of construction. Despite some utilitarianness, they managed to maintain a high level of building culture and combine simplicity and functionality with the requirement of a certain degree of representativeness.
The formal style of Karel Láník's architecture convened the fields of the "everyday life" character of ordinary residential construction of rapidly expanding suburbs. It can be considered as an example of traditional interwar architecture, a distant modernist avant-garde, yet still taking into account and utilizing contemporary ideological and formal tendencies. The starting point of inspiration for Láník's architectural work was undoubtedly the eclectic architecture of his teacher Karel Hugo Kepka, impressively transforming the forms of late historicism and Art Nouveau. Gradually, Karel Láník found his own peculiar style in which many details, especially decorative facade elements, are based on the impulses of geometric modernity or decorative facades of Czech architectural cubism, while at the same time not abandoning certain principles of historicizing tradition. Láník's buildings thus combine the residuals of late-historic residential buildings with current formal tendencies and building-technological processes, creating a distinctive tension due to the layering of traditionalist and modernist elements in an original synthesis of indisputable aesthetic qualities. At the same time, his architectural work is characterized by a repetition of favorite forms and creative experimentation with various possibilities of their variation.
At first glance, the faćades of Láník's apartment buildings in Královo Pole are inconspicuous yet sophisticatedly composed structures, in which each element has its precise place in a harmonic harmony of the whole and are attractive in their mature sense of balance and moderation. Láník's family houses in the "new residential area" are also very impressive, with their timeless elegance and refinement together with their synergistic effect of architectural shapes placing them among the finest examples of urban creation in Brno in the 1920s. Generally speaking, the timeless value of Karel Láník's work must be emphasized in terms of urban design; we can observe the constant and successful efforts of the architect to sensitively integrate the new buildings into their immediate surroundings so that each of his buildings provides an original meaning in the context of a particular place and its history.

Keywords: Karel Láník, architect, Brno, Královo Pole, 1920s, interwar architecture

Published: September 1, 2019  Show citation