Alena Šrámková will receive the Honor from the Czech Chamber of Architects

Alena Šrámková (photo Petr Jedinák, www.jedinak.cz)

Prague - The Czech Chamber of Architects will award a tribute to Alena Šrámková for the year 2007. The author, who is considered by experts to be among the top of the domestic architectural scene, is primarily known for the realization of projects for the new hall of Prague's Main Train Station and the administrative building of ČKD at Můstek. She created it together with her husband Jan Šrámek. She will receive the award in April during her exhibition at the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery in Prague.
    The tribute from the Czech Chamber of Architects is intended for a significant personality who has made a notable impact on modern Czech architecture with their work and approach. According to the chamber, Šrámková belongs to this group with her distinctive creations. She is classified among the representatives of so-called Czech severity, as architectural historian Rostislav Švácha characterized a group of architects known for their inclination towards minimalist tendencies.
    After World War II, Šrámková studied architecture at the Technical University in Bratislava, and in the 1950s she completed three years in Jaroslav Fragner's studio at the Academy of Art in Prague. She worked at several design offices, and at the end of the 1980s, she was employed in the SIAL studio, which, under the leadership of architect Karel Hubáček, represented one of the few significant and distinctive currents of Czech architecture since the 1960s.
    Since 1991, she has been teaching at the Faculty of Architecture at the Czech Technical University, and since 1992 she has had her own architectural studio, Šrámková Architekti. In the mid-1990s, she was a member of the Prague Gremium for the Protection and Development of Cultural Space in the capital city, and in 1999 she was appointed professor at the Academy of Art in Prague.
    Among other works by Alena Šrámková, the cultural center Lužiny from 1983, created in collaboration with Ladislav Lábus, is noteworthy. From the 1990s, there is the tower for the researcher Na Košíku, where the author's ability to achieve remarkable results through simplicity and ordinariness was particularly evident, according to experts.
    The chamber has been awarding the tribute since 2000; in 2004, it was not awarded. Last year, Miroslav Masák received it, while Karel Hubáček received it the year before. This year, there were nine nominations - five for living architects Emil Hlaváček, Jan Kaplický, Emil Přikryl, Viktor Rudiš, and Šrámková, and four nominations were made for personalities in memoriam - they are Karel Filsak, Jindřich Freiwald, Ladislav Konopka, and Jan Sokol.