Experts mapped the history of the New House colony in Brno

Brno - Experts mapped the history and present of the Nový dům colony in Brno-Žabovřesky. For 90 years, it has represented an icon of modern interwar architecture at the European level. The houses in the colony were meant to showcase a modern form of housing and were constructed in connection with the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture at the Brno Exhibition Grounds. However, selling some of them took more than ten years, as described in the book Nový dům Brno 1928, published by the Museum of the City of Brno.

The colony consists of a collection of sixteen family houses built under Wilson's forest in Žabovřesky. Immediately after its inception, it was classified and still belongs to six key European colonies established between 1927 and 1932 in Stuttgart, Brno, Wrocław, Zurich, Vienna, and Prague. The Brno exhibition Nový dům was the first event of its kind in interwar Czechoslovakia and the second in Europe and had a significant influence on the later establishment of the Baba settlement in Prague.

The Nový dům colony was built by the private construction company of František Uherka and Čeňek Ruller under the ideological patronage of the Union of Czechoslovak Works. The builders invited eight Brno architects and one from Prague to develop projects for sixteen row or detached family houses according to the zoning plan of Bohuslav Fuchs and Jaroslav Grunt, each of whom designed a three-house in the colony. The authors of the semi-detached houses were Josef Štěpánek, Jan Víšek, and Ernst Wiesner; the detached houses were designed by Hugo Foltýn, Jiří Kroha, Miroslav Putna, and Jaroslav Syřiště.

Due to delays in the completion of the colony's construction, the public could only familiarize themselves with sample house types towards the end of the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture. However, potential clients were not yet adequately prepared for the modern concept of family houses, and sales or rentals stalled, leaving the entire project significantly below expectations and causing substantial financial problems for the entrepreneurs. The monograph provides a comprehensive view of the topic for the first time. It describes, among other things, the origins, parallels and specifics, and the contemporary media image of this exceptional endeavor. The publication includes a catalog of the houses and profiles of the architects and builders.

According to architect Ivan Ruller, who is the son of one of the project's founders, foreign experts were interested in the Nový dům colony during the previous regime, despite the neglect of the building complex. "Today, one can only lament that subsequent generations allowed this brilliant bloom of cultural engagement from their predecessors to wither away," wrote Ruller in the book. Today, only the facades of six houses are protected as historical monuments. Efforts to declare the entire set of buildings a monument have failed precisely due to their devaluation by various modifications.