The university, museum, gallery, and Ještěd will commemorate architect Hubáček in Liberec.

Liberec - The author of the iconic hotel and transmitter Ještěd, architect Karel Hubáček, who would celebrate his hundredth birthday on Friday, will be commemorated by the university, the North Bohemian Museum, and the Regional Gallery, as well as directly at Ještěd. The museum will offer guided tours of the architect's house, which was acquired by the Liberec Region, as part of an exhibition dedicated to Hubáček from June 12 to October 6. Interested parties can already take a virtual walk through the house on the website www.dumkh.cz, said Jiří Křížek, director of the North Bohemian Museum in Liberec, to journalists today.

Karel Hubáček was born on February 23, 1924, studied architecture in Prague, but his professional work is largely associated with Liberec, where he joined the then Stavoprojekt. In the late 1960s, he was among the founders of the SIAL studio, which was able to respond to modern European trends during the normalization period and produced several personalities of Czech architecture. Hubáček is credited with numerous buildings. In Liberec, in addition to the hotel and transmitter on Ještěd, he is also associated with the now non-existent Ještěd department store or the former ČSOB building on Frýdlantská street, and he is well-known for the cinema in Doksy.

Hubáček is the only Czech and Czechoslovak recipient of the Perret Prize awarded by the International Union of Architects, and the exhibition at the North Bohemian Museum will showcase his work. "Curators Luděk Lukuvka and Jakub Potůček want to present the complete work of Karel Hubáček. We want to focus on buildings that may not have been realized, projects that remained in the drawer, or perhaps are even located outside the territory of the Czech Republic and are not so widely known," Křížek added.

On Friday, a program will be dedicated to the architect at the Technical University in Liberec, where he co-founded the Faculty of Architecture 30 years ago and also taught there. The Memory of the Nation will present the documentary "Lighthouse Karel Hubáček" on that occasion. "It captures in the memories of colleagues, friends, and family the direction he showed to dozens of young architects in the dark sea of normalization," added Michaela Pavlátová, director of the North Bohemian Memory of the Nation. The program will also include a panel discussion.

The F.X. Šalda Theatre has prepared the premiere of the play SIAL Triplets for March 19, which is a tribute to the creators of Ještěd and the founders of the architectural studio SIAL: Karel Hubáček, Miroslav Masák, and Otakar Binar. The Regional Gallery in Liberec has prepared the exhibition "Mountain Horizon: Landscape under Ještěd" for the period from June 14 to September 29, which includes works from the collections from the 19th century to the 1980s, whose central theme is the mountain Ještěd.

The architect is also being commemorated directly at Ještěd. "We have returned a small exhibition to Ještěd that recalls the original elements from Ještěd, and there are also some photographs. We also wanted to present the author to people who may only come to the restaurant or came for a trip and know nothing about the circumstances of the Ještěd’s construction with a banner in the entrance hall," said Milena Lánská from the company Ještěd, which operates the mountain hotel and restaurant. The city of Liberec is also preparing a virtual tour of the hotel and transmitter Ještěd for the summer.