The architect and historian Martin Kubelík has died.
At the end of last year, Martin Kubelík passed away, a great educator, significant researcher, global citizen, anti-communist, and a person with unprecedented breadth of knowledge.
Martin began lecturing at the Faculty of Architecture at CTU in the spring of 1991, and it was a powerful experience for all of us – students across the years who attended his lectures. The lecture hall was always packed. His lectures felt otherworldly, always perfectly prepared, excellently structured, brilliantly presented, and complemented with quality slides. Moreover, Martin lectured in Czech, a language that was his native tongue but one that he encountered only in emigration after 1947, primarily from his parents and their friends.
I still remember how the 90-minute lecture passed in the blink of an eye. Everything fit together perfectly, and although we, as first-year students, were not able to understand everything that Martin talked about, his lectures seemed electrifying to us. His passion, enthusiasm, deep knowledge, and his language from the 1940s were fascinating. And when we saw his father, Rafael Kubelík, with his second wife, Elsie Morrison, in the last row, we felt as if we were part of something historically significant.
In parallel with his teaching at the faculty, Martin served as a professor at the Institute für Baukunst und Bauaufnahmen at the Technical University of Vienna. He wanted to resign from this position and start working permanently at the Prague Faculty of Architecture, where he won a selection process for the head of one of the institutes but did not obtain the position. Allegedly, he was not sufficiently qualified for the role.
He studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and architecture and history of architecture at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule in Aachen. I remember how he often emphasized to us that he had also studied a creative field and always wanted to know the design process in detail. He considered it essential for his subsequent theoretical and research work.
When I met Martin, he moved between two continents, several countries, with effortless familiarity but also great humility, and spoke five world languages fluently. He was a fellow at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice and Biblioteca Hertziana (Max Planck Institute) in Rome, collaborated for several years with the Rathgenforschungslabor Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, and was the founder of the Laboratory of Quantitative Methods in Monument Research in Prague.
Before he could visit the country where he was born for the first time at the age of forty-three, a country where his parents refused to live due to the rise of a criminal regime and emigrated to Switzerland in the summer of 1947, Martin taught at universities in Basel and Würzburg as an assistant in art history institutes and served as an associate professor at Cornell University in the USA.
The focus of his research and also his passion was Veneto, particularly Venetian villas, and the personality and work of Andrea Palladio. As far as I know, Italian Vicenza was very close to his heart. The results of his research were published in a number of books and articles. “400 Years of Venetian Villas 1404-1797” is his last book, which he collaborated on for many years with his wife Kamila Kubelíková and which was reissued last year by Jalna Publishing.
In Prague, Martin did not only teach at the Faculty of Architecture at CTU but also taught for several years at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering. He was also invited to the Academy of Fine Arts and the AAAD (Applied Arts School).
He was an unforgettable teacher who influenced our generation with his original approach to the history of architecture, his interpretation of the importance of teaching history and theory of architecture within architectural education, his openness and sincerity, expertise, and perspective. In the late 1990s, we awarded him, as the first and I believe the only educator, the Olověný Dušan award. He valued it deeply, more than any other, as he once personally told me. Martin, we miss you.
Regina Loukotová
source: kubelik.info
Martin began lecturing at the Faculty of Architecture at CTU in the spring of 1991, and it was a powerful experience for all of us – students across the years who attended his lectures. The lecture hall was always packed. His lectures felt otherworldly, always perfectly prepared, excellently structured, brilliantly presented, and complemented with quality slides. Moreover, Martin lectured in Czech, a language that was his native tongue but one that he encountered only in emigration after 1947, primarily from his parents and their friends.
I still remember how the 90-minute lecture passed in the blink of an eye. Everything fit together perfectly, and although we, as first-year students, were not able to understand everything that Martin talked about, his lectures seemed electrifying to us. His passion, enthusiasm, deep knowledge, and his language from the 1940s were fascinating. And when we saw his father, Rafael Kubelík, with his second wife, Elsie Morrison, in the last row, we felt as if we were part of something historically significant.
In parallel with his teaching at the faculty, Martin served as a professor at the Institute für Baukunst und Bauaufnahmen at the Technical University of Vienna. He wanted to resign from this position and start working permanently at the Prague Faculty of Architecture, where he won a selection process for the head of one of the institutes but did not obtain the position. Allegedly, he was not sufficiently qualified for the role.
He studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and architecture and history of architecture at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule in Aachen. I remember how he often emphasized to us that he had also studied a creative field and always wanted to know the design process in detail. He considered it essential for his subsequent theoretical and research work.
When I met Martin, he moved between two continents, several countries, with effortless familiarity but also great humility, and spoke five world languages fluently. He was a fellow at the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice and Biblioteca Hertziana (Max Planck Institute) in Rome, collaborated for several years with the Rathgenforschungslabor Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, and was the founder of the Laboratory of Quantitative Methods in Monument Research in Prague.
Before he could visit the country where he was born for the first time at the age of forty-three, a country where his parents refused to live due to the rise of a criminal regime and emigrated to Switzerland in the summer of 1947, Martin taught at universities in Basel and Würzburg as an assistant in art history institutes and served as an associate professor at Cornell University in the USA.
The focus of his research and also his passion was Veneto, particularly Venetian villas, and the personality and work of Andrea Palladio. As far as I know, Italian Vicenza was very close to his heart. The results of his research were published in a number of books and articles. “400 Years of Venetian Villas 1404-1797” is his last book, which he collaborated on for many years with his wife Kamila Kubelíková and which was reissued last year by Jalna Publishing.
In Prague, Martin did not only teach at the Faculty of Architecture at CTU but also taught for several years at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering. He was also invited to the Academy of Fine Arts and the AAAD (Applied Arts School).
He was an unforgettable teacher who influenced our generation with his original approach to the history of architecture, his interpretation of the importance of teaching history and theory of architecture within architectural education, his openness and sincerity, expertise, and perspective. In the late 1990s, we awarded him, as the first and I believe the only educator, the Olověný Dušan award. He valued it deeply, more than any other, as he once personally told me. Martin, we miss you.
Regina Loukotová
source: kubelik.info
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21.01.23 05:34
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