Petr Volf: On the Seventieth Anniversary of Julka Macháček
Julek Macháček was born as Julius, but I have never heard anyone call him anything other than Julek. There is something boyish about it because he is boyish, and nothing changes that, not even his full beard. It’s as if he could never really grow old. Seventy? Nonsense... It is very relative, however, I have an idea of what causes this youthfulness. I am conducting a long-term survey because I am interested in aging as a phenomenon, and I have found that people who dedicate their lives only to what they truly love, without having to resort to compromises, do not age. Julek Macháček has probably always only done what he truly enjoyed.
I consider him a legend among journalists and publicists dealing with architecture, design, and lifestyle in general. He was expelled from journalism in his fifth year because he refused to share the basic normalization thesis that the Russian invasion was not an attack on the sovereignty of the country but brotherly assistance. Nevertheless, he managed to make a name for himself. True talent will
eventually assert itself, no matter how unfavorable the conditions for growth are. As a boy, I grew up on the magazine Bydlení, which he founded at the end of the 1970s and also led for a long time. It was a revelation back then. On its pages, he presented the works of then-young architects Michal Brix, Václav Králíček, Jan Línek, Jan Bočan, Vladimír Krátký, Jiří Pelcl, and other personalities who proved that despite the prevailing stiffness, Czech architecture could have hope in the future.
Julek differed from others who wrote about building in that he had both journalistic training and very practical knowledge stemming from the fact that he had previously studied furniture design at the excellent art and design school in Žižkov. That is an exceptional combination. It is not just about the ability to construct a chair or a table: he is so talented that he could design a house himself and also build it with his own hands. I am preparing a book about the homes of Czech architects, and Julek’s will not be missing... It seems to me that he has imprinted his self-portrait in it and will thus be the only author who did not graduate from an architectural university.
This event occurred at a time when he was editor-in-chief and publisher of the magazine Architekt, to which I was able to contribute. Julek Macháček offered dream conditions: he gave me complete freedom, allowing me to write extensive materials that, given that they were around twenty manuscript pages long, had no chance of being published elsewhere.
He himself commands a fresh language that gets to the heart of the matter, without clichés, without pseudo-expert theorizing that obscures the meaning of the message. Sometimes I met him at the Kabinet café, which he built in Dejvice. Julek is a café type; we talked about buildings and life over tea or coffee. Or I visited him in the basement office in Petřiny, near Prager’s Macromolecular Institute, opposite the tram terminus, and each time we came up with some other theme.
He created a top-notch architectural magazine together with Táňa Štefánková, just the two of them: how they managed to do that is a mystery to me, but they certainly poured their hearts into it, and thanks to that, they could withstand even the unpleasant behavior from the management of the Association of Architects, which ultimately led to the demise of the famous medium. It was a heartfelt matter for them, just like it was for me. I continued collaborating in the magazine Architect+ and I will write for Julek when he starts another magazine again.
I consider him a legend among journalists and publicists dealing with architecture, design, and lifestyle in general. He was expelled from journalism in his fifth year because he refused to share the basic normalization thesis that the Russian invasion was not an attack on the sovereignty of the country but brotherly assistance. Nevertheless, he managed to make a name for himself. True talent will
eventually assert itself, no matter how unfavorable the conditions for growth are. As a boy, I grew up on the magazine Bydlení, which he founded at the end of the 1970s and also led for a long time. It was a revelation back then. On its pages, he presented the works of then-young architects Michal Brix, Václav Králíček, Jan Línek, Jan Bočan, Vladimír Krátký, Jiří Pelcl, and other personalities who proved that despite the prevailing stiffness, Czech architecture could have hope in the future.
Julek differed from others who wrote about building in that he had both journalistic training and very practical knowledge stemming from the fact that he had previously studied furniture design at the excellent art and design school in Žižkov. That is an exceptional combination. It is not just about the ability to construct a chair or a table: he is so talented that he could design a house himself and also build it with his own hands. I am preparing a book about the homes of Czech architects, and Julek’s will not be missing... It seems to me that he has imprinted his self-portrait in it and will thus be the only author who did not graduate from an architectural university.
This event occurred at a time when he was editor-in-chief and publisher of the magazine Architekt, to which I was able to contribute. Julek Macháček offered dream conditions: he gave me complete freedom, allowing me to write extensive materials that, given that they were around twenty manuscript pages long, had no chance of being published elsewhere.
He himself commands a fresh language that gets to the heart of the matter, without clichés, without pseudo-expert theorizing that obscures the meaning of the message. Sometimes I met him at the Kabinet café, which he built in Dejvice. Julek is a café type; we talked about buildings and life over tea or coffee. Or I visited him in the basement office in Petřiny, near Prager’s Macromolecular Institute, opposite the tram terminus, and each time we came up with some other theme.
He created a top-notch architectural magazine together with Táňa Štefánková, just the two of them: how they managed to do that is a mystery to me, but they certainly poured their hearts into it, and thanks to that, they could withstand even the unpleasant behavior from the management of the Association of Architects, which ultimately led to the demise of the famous medium. It was a heartfelt matter for them, just like it was for me. I continued collaborating in the magazine Architect+ and I will write for Julek when he starts another magazine again.
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