<p>An English monograph on Jan Kotěra is being published</p>

After twenty-five years, a monograph about architect, designer, and educator Jan Kotěra is being published for foreign readers.
On September 15, 2025, the monograph of architect, designer, and educator Jan Kotěra (1871—1923) will be released. Nine leading historians of architecture assess the local and global role and legacy of Jan Kotěra as well as his twenty-five years of educational influence in the book. The book aims to be accessible to foreign audiences that have not yet discovered Kotěra.
The publication begins with a forty-page visual overview of Kotěra's work, documented over two years by architectural photographer Jiří Zikmund. It aims to showcase both the stylistic and material diversity of Kotěra's architectural and design creations, as well as the condition in which they have survived to this day. The visual introduction contains over one hundred photographs. Fifteen chapters are divided into three sections: local contexts of Kotěra's work, which include his urbanism (Vendula Hnídková and Markéta Žáčková), collaboration with artists (Martin Krummholz), Kotěra's experiments with historicism (Jan Galeta), or his distinctive vision of representing the new Czechoslovakia (Ladislav Jackson). This is followed by a section dedicated to Kotěra's pedagogical work at the Applied Arts School (Jana Sklenářová Teichmanová) and the Academy of Fine Arts (Ladislav Jackson). The third section deals with the international contexts of Kotěra's work: exchanges with England (Helena Cox), Kotěra's views on orientalism (Helena Čapková), his journey to the United States (Ladislav Jackson), exchanges with the Netherlands (Miroslav Pavel), and Kotěra's ambitions on the Adriatic and in the South Slavic countries (Ladislav Jackson).
The editors of the book are architecture historians Ladislav Jackson (Brno University of Technology) and Helena Čapková (Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto). In 2021, they co-edited the Czech-language book The Architect's Myth: Jan Kotěra 150, which was published for the 150th anniversary of Kotěra's birth. For the current English-language book, the editors took part of the chapters and supplemented them with three new texts: on Kotěra's collaboration with sculptor Stanislav Sucharda, on the creative exchange between the Czech lands and England, and new insights into Kotěra's projects in the South Slavic countries and on the Adriatic, viewed from postcolonial perspectives. “The new expanded version of the book about the founding creator of Czech modern architecture, Jan Kotěra, offers a collection of new perspectives and analyses of the author's work in international and theoretical contexts. The transnational horizon of Kotěra's artistic and pedagogical activities can be an inspiration for architect-readers and the general public,” says editor Helena Čapková. “Our effort was to introduce Kotěra's work to foreign audiences after twenty-five years and simultaneously respond to shifts in art historical discourse towards postcolonial studies and discussions about the relationship between cultural centers and peripheries. It shows that Kotěra was simultaneously influenced by the achievements coming from Western European centers but also tried to capitalize on the colonization of even larger peripheries than the Czech lands, such as the Adriatic,” adds editor Ladislav Jackson.
The book will be available in the distribution networks of Kosmas and Amazon. It will be ceremoniously launched on September 15, 2025, at the Laichter House in Prague. The publication of the book is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.