LIBERATION of Slovak architecture

Slovak Vectors

The text was published in the accompanying catalog for the exhibition TWENTY AFTER TWENTY

It seems (from within) that Slovakia is already a standard Central European architectural landscape. It has comparable mechanisms for presenting its architectural scene with its neighbors. After a forty-year period of "Iron Curtain," a new generation has emerged in Slovakia, which studied in the new social conditions after 1989. This catalog of the exhibition featuring 20 Czech and 20 Slovak young architectural groups is also a probe into the "contemporary Slovak architectural scene," whose members, alongside other authors, represent a new generation of new architecture in the new democracies of old Czechoslovakia and the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Czech-Slovak brotherhood always had various epithets: elder and younger brother, more rational and emotional nature, "Švejk" and "Jánošík"... This exhibition features Czech "doghouses" and Slovak "birdhouses." There are terms like "Czech strictness" and "Slovak looseness." However, what is the starting basis for these feelings? Is the Slovak scene different or similar to the Czech, Austrian, Hungarian, European ones? Is it globally similar to others but with a different DNA? Does Slovak architecture have little "humor," while Czech architecture has a bit more? Is Slovak architecture "faithful" to so-called parallel modernism and Czech architecture to classical modernism? Is there a generation of architect Vladimír Dedeček and Karel Prágra? Is someone doing "experiments" here or there? Fifteen years after the dissolution of the common federation, is Slovakia still tied to the Czechs? Why has Bratislava, twenty years after the opening of borders, failed to mentally connect with Vienna? To describe the current state of the young Slovak architectural scene, besides gathering existing activities, actions, and creating diagrams of networks, it is necessary to identify Slovak architecture itself by the parameters of its perception (from the outside). The method of “trial” interpretation of these topics was the confrontation of the views and understanding of the Central European space by the author of this text with Czech-Austrian-Slovak expert on Central European culture Jan Tabor before his lecture at the VŠVU in Bratislava. The vectors of modern Slovak architecture have historically twisted several times. Initially, it was graduates from Budapest, Prague, and Vienna who came and worked in Slovakia. In the 1950s until 1990, the entire architectural production was created by the domestic Slovak scene connected to the international context, even when operating in the sphere of "Soviet influence." In the last twenty years, authorial sources have diversified, physical relations and mobility have begun to intermingle. Foreign investors with their architecture came in, part of the Bratislava graduates left for abroad in the uncertain times of the 90s, mainly to Prague. In the first decade of the new millennium, the situation radically changed; dramatic economic growth in Slovakia created conditions not only for the young, mostly still-studying generation but also attracted back young architects working abroad. Just as the Austrian or Czech young architectural scenes are tied to the urban and political centers of Vienna and Budapest, nearly the entire Slovak "new generation" is concentrated in Bratislava.

Post-identification
In the international context, Slovakia is still an architecturally unknown country. The young Slovak architectural scene is gradually liberating itself; self-renewal is a permanent phenomenon for Slovak architecture. Slovak architecture has always gone through a complex and multifaceted process throughout its short history, not only after 1990. Slovak space and thus its identity, culture, and architecture have slowly and gradually defined themselves in small Central European geographical coordinates of a mixed territory, where there were always strong Hungarian, German, Austrian, Czech, and Jewish influences. Modern Slovak history, personalities, and their works shaping modern Slovak architecture existed until 1948, yet the actual development of Slovak space, and thus the creation of an architectural scene in Slovakia, occurred only in the second half of the 20th century. Unlike neighboring Central European peers like Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Brno, whose modern architecture was formed by the industrial revolution of the late 19th century, the modern history of Bratislava, Košice, and the whole of Slovakia is linked to urban modernization after the end of World War II, when Czechoslovakia entered the communist "Eastern Bloc"; however, it was only then that the Slovak part of the republic caught up with the delayed industrial and ethnic process, thirty years after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Factories were created, but also national institutions, universities, architecture schools, and other cultural establishments. It was not until the 1950s that the first generation of Bratislava graduates from the newly established architecture schools at the Slovak Technical University entered practice, and more than a decade later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, thus creating an identical generation that had opportunities for great realizations. Despite political limitations, a strong generation of late modernists emerged, who had an exceptional opportunity to build on the revolutionary ideas of the interwar leftist architectural avant-gardes. Because the sixty-year period of Slovakia (1948 to 1989/90) overlaps with the period of communist totality in Czechoslovakia, this key stage of Slovak architecture is still taboo, perceived as controversial by the public, and still awaits serious analysis and reflection.

Permanent Self-renewal
The last two decades from 1989 to 2009 are paradoxically somewhat similar to the preceding forty-year period (1948-1968-1989). The situation after 1948 repeats itself in inverted form; a new beginning occurs again. The previous period is rejected and criticized, as if there is no quality for which to build upon. Only "post-modernism" and its local rhizome of "neo-functionalism" survive. New architecture schools are being created and reorganized, generating new social structures, and after a relatively short period of turbulence following the establishment of the new state - Slovakia - an investment and construction boom also arises. In the post-revolutionary period of 1990, after the gradual dissolution and disappearance of state-funded project institutes, private architectural studios began to emerge from the remnants of these enterprises, taking over the existing network of investors, contacts, contracts, and relationships. They were joined by new competition, foreign offices producing projects for the newly created development markets in the new democracies. However, unlike more significant and exclusive locations, cultures, countries, and metropolises where more prominent architects were engaged, in less important investment destinations like Slovakia, standard to below-average concepts sufficed, with correspondingly less important significance for multinational corporations and lower social and cultural demands. The relatively easy and uncontrolled access to contracts also allowed for the emergence of a large group of designers made up of civil engineers and non-architects or still-studying unfinished architects. The absence of higher aesthetics and ethics in society has always been and remains a brake on recognizable change. Architecture in Slovakia has never connected with the cultural scene. Except for the significant avant-garde School of Applied Arts founded in 1928, oriented in its study program after the German Bauhaus model, national styles were never created in Slovakia, unlike Vienna, Budapest, or Prague, and manifestos were not formed. The community of architects has never merged with another artistic, visual, or literary scene. Architecture as a discipline has always been perceived in Slovakia as construction and craftsmanship. There has always been a differentiation of professions; an architect was a builder, someone else addressed the interior, and another added art. This concept of craftsmanship (architect/builder, carpenter/interior designer, artist/glazier...) founded the architecture school at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in the early 60s - exterior Dušan Kuzma, interior Vojtech Vilhan, and glass in architecture Václav Cígler. Hoffmann's or Loos's integrating architecture did not fare well here. Slovak architecture lacks transitions.

Opening Cans
In the new millennium, Slovak architecture, like in the past, continually experiences signs of opening up to global trends. There is currently a weak sign of creating an infrastructure that did not exist before. Initiatory groups of architects, organizations, and spaces for architectural activities are constantly emerging. The Slovak scene realizes that it must go abroad. However, the self-identification process will still be very long. What is today’s scene composed of? As Marian Zervan states regarding the exhibition of photographs by Ľubo Stach in London, the world of Slovak architecture is not formed only by completed buildings, projects, proposals, or exhibitions, lectures, and discussions, associations, schools, and books, but also by an irreplaceable and definitive photographic record of this world. Slovaks have begun to be active in this regard. An exceptional phenomenon not only of the Slovak but the entire Czechoslovak post-revolution scene is the studio ksa, founded by Slovak Jan Studený and Czech David Kopecký, whose realizations generally exceeded the scale of Central Europe. Slovak realizations are increasingly being published not only in the Czech Republic but also in an international context; we learn much about them, for example, from contributions by Mária Topoľčianska, a doctoral student in Barcelona in Ibeling's European monthly A10. Conceptual designs and progressive exhibitions of experiments like "Form follows risk" by Slovak-Czech theorist and architecture critic Monika Mitášová, along with legendary activists of the Czech visual scene, the Ševčík couple, complement the representative exhibitions organized by the Union of Slovak Architects and tireless "veterans" promoting the Slovak architectural scene, Ján Bahna, Štefan Šlacht, and Matúš Dula, currently operating in Prague. Slovakia has already independently presented itself several times at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. Architectural stars like Peter Cook, Wolf Prix, or Greg Lynn have begun visiting Bratislava with their lectures; a few good architectural exhibitions of Czech, Slovenian, Austrian, and Swiss architecture have been seen, as well as renowned studios like NL. Architects, Foreign Office Architects, BIG, or even Studio Libeskind in the 90s. School studios are emerging, introducing the Western system of critiques. Publications reflecting contemporary or "discovered" architecture in Slovakia are being published abroad. The cult book Eastmodern by Austrian authors Hertha Hurnaus, Benjamin Konrad, and Maik Novotny has created a positive stir. Slovaks were also involved in the birth of the lively European project Wonderland and became part of the activities of the Central European Architecture Center in Prague. In Bratislava and Žilina, the worldwide format Pecha-Kucha Night is organized. The "Urban Interventions" project by Matúš Vall and Oliver Sadovsky has initiated a new form of architectural activism. In the international context, the name of the promoter of Slovak architecture Henrieta Moravčíková is well known, who, along with Monika Mitášová and Mária Topoľčianska, also represents the post-revolution generation. For Slovak architecture, it is important to create a source platform of people studying at recognizable architecture schools such as Vienna’s Angewandte, Barcelona, American Ivy League schools Princeton, UCLA, Cornell, Columbia... and who begin working at some of these influential institutions. Slovak nomadic architects Dana Čupková Myers and Peter Stec belong to the new generation moving through the entire spectrum of studios, institutions, offices, and personalities presenting the current international architectural scene. Slovaks collaborate with Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog and de Meuron, Wolf Prix, and many others. Apart from the groups presented in this exhibition selection, there is also another generational platform of architects working differently and elsewhere. Igor Marko in London, Karol Stassel in Bratislava, Michal Šištík in Dubai. Lists can now be updated at any moment. And that is good, but also treacherous. This is how it can be naively seen (from within).

Imro Vaško
Laboratory of Architecture VŠVU
IVA - Institute of Visionary Architecture
Bratislava SK