Elitists and Vagabonds

Origin, student years, vision and beginnings

How did you get into architecture? What led you to it?
I used to draw futuristic "UFO" landscapes in elementary school. My first experience with architecture as a child happened here, when I turned in a model of a village made out of medicine boxes. That was in the sixth grade. By then I already knew what I wanted to be.

How would you now, with a decade's distance, name the basic determinants of your childhood?
The basic determinant of my childhood was happy freedom. Life on the street revolving around football and playing Indians. That shaped me (without irony).

What kind of family background do you come from?
An intellectual one. My parents are university graduates, my older brother is a doctor, which allows me to discuss things that interest me.

Even at university, you seemed very goal-oriented to me. Where do you think that came from?
I'm not particularly goal-oriented in terms of career, but I am in terms of my life's vision. I like focused work on self-improvement. Slowly and consistently. I admire wolves that track their prey for days. My prey isn't architecture; it’s my life.

What did your studies give you?
Looking back, it gave me a good youth. A fun and creative school. Through projects, I got involved in other creative pursuits, such as good music or good graphics. The school was still so communist at the time I was there that what I didn't get through my own energy, I simply didn't have. The first real thing that happened to me there was Šik.

Why?
A guy who had charisma, and in hindsight, I see he also had great wisdom. He wasn't burdened by our small crater; he wasn’t tied to local connections. He was his own person and I admired his conservativeness at school.

Where do you see the biggest gap between students’ ideas of practice and reality?
In having or not having clients. No one told us that there might come a time when you don’t have work. Of course, at the beginning of my independent career, I had little work and constantly struggled with money. In school, you feel like you know something, and then they kick you out into the world and you expect things to just happen. But they don't happen at all by themselves. Being talented and knowing something doesn't mean you'll get a good job.

Starting points of creation

Mr. Paťha's house in Říčany

What strategy did you choose to establish yourself in the market?
I was very naive. Out of an excess of energy and a fire in my heart, I organized an exhibition that got my name out there. Based on that exhibition, a sponsor introduced me to a client for whom I built a family house in Říčany. Then I started to struggle to get that train moving. But it’s always about human energy and vitality. As naive as I was, I was also invulnerable. I didn't allow myself to think about problems.

Many architects talk about how every place has already drawn its own project.
I would just add that we also draw the story of the person who will use the building. The client brings their personal characteristics - juice, color, taste, scent… They bring in many things, and if you’re not too in love with yourself, you can sense that and use it as a kind of energy. I think that we unnecessarily overlook interpersonal connections. Just like we overlook our own influence on others. If you offer the client only your personal vision, just your ego, that shows terribly on the buildings. I decided to learn a bit unobtrusively from my clients as well.

Transcentrum Hotel, Prague-Hostivař

How does your concept for a building design come about? Could you summarize the starting points of your creation?
Not having a style. Seeking new solutions that I haven't used before. Looking for inspiration in all possible fields unrelated to architecture. Always being open. Trying to see beneath the surface of things and read the client. I think that without a certain talent, you won’t make it. I don’t have many foreign inspirations in the sense that I hunt them down in books or that I see a photo of a locomotive and it inspires me. My houses are very different. I uphold the principle "everything is possible." Although you can definitely trace a certain handwriting in my work. It’s hard to go beyond your shadow. When a client tells me they're a bit crazy and like frogs, I perceive that as a whim; I don't know how to solve it, but I think about it, and usually, frogs make it into the project. I think it largely depends on our architectural ego and self-calming. We’re not in a race. Everything happens somewhat spontaneously. I always try to consider the conditions of the plot. Where the sun shines, where trees grow, where the river flows, where the road is, where it's nice on the plot and where it’s ugly. First, a large awkward shape emerges, even if it’s ugly. Architecturally unacceptable, yet all this carries with it the notion that I try to think about the future user within my possibilities. I certainly don’t have a style that I like. I like a lot of things. I listen to many kinds of music.

How do you know when the design is good?
Intuition. My little creature.

Typology of the contemporary architect, in their forties

Family house, Prague-Stodůlky

You have one of the smallest offices that can exist, yet you offer comprehensive services. How would you describe your path?
I've always thought of the lone wolf analogy, who is driven out of the pack. He can survive in the jungle by himself, as he is trained by circumstances and knows how to manage everything on his own. Or also a solitary sailor. In life, I need people, family, and friends a lot around me; at work, not so much. It’s not a very contemporary and trendy model; the world is coming together, and modern offices always have more partners. But never say never; I think that could change. I have it arranged this way because I want the option to stop doing architecture anytime, and I do other things during the day besides work in the office. But if I went out in the morning to practice with nunchucks, I would demotivate the people around me unnecessarily. I am always half out. Freedom and life are more important to me.

Why do you also offer guidance, coordination, and construction realization to your clients?
I got into it because I had constant problems with construction companies. I felt they were ruining things. I knew they could be done the way I wanted. So I thought, I won’t just complain about how poorly they do it, and I’ll set it up so I can do it too, and I will build the houses according to my vision. The second reason is the new experience. I found myself on the other side of the barricade, which also adjusted my view of the architect as a person in the process. The third reason was that I wanted to earn money in other areas, not just through designing. And fourth, I wanted to communicate with different types of people in fresh air. I’m not much of an office type. I’ve built several houses this way. It’s an enormous experience because I got to see the other side for a moment. I realized that to stay within budget, I had to put in the ugly cheap doors. Suddenly, I saw the whole issue from the other side and negotiated with myself from two different positions.

That’s quite a significant experience.

Hotel Pleš

And I think that’s important. When someone is wealthy, they should get to the other side to understand how those who have not been so fortunate see the world, and vice versa. As I said, I am fascinated by people at gas stations or scientists, for example. Among the poor, I have seen so much nobility and politeness, and among the successful, so much nervousness and complaining. Who is better off? The world seems to face you with the notion that you have to strive for success. Whether it’s the famous unhappy drug-addicted singer, then thanks, no interest… On the other hand, some of my clients are very wealthy, yet they exude great energy. I am not a leftist enamored with factory workers for my image.

Your offer diverges from the routine notion of a design architectural studio. What is needed for that?
Ordinary human energy. There probably won’t be any special sophistication behind that. When I wake up in bed in the morning, I love the whole world… for now…

How do you specifically relate to the client?
I feel a certain duty towards the client in what I should offer him, how to take care of him, how to guide him, how to speak with him, how to empathize with him, how to understand him, and how to meet his needs. But you can’t learn that just by designing houses.

How do you perceive the general position of architects in our society?

Family house, Vrané nad Vltavou

When I finished school, I already had a slightly suspicious feeling about architecture as a field. It’s a slightly intellectual thing, moving in very precise tracks, even though it appears to be a very free artistic profession. Most people imagine an architect as a guy in a white shirt with a neckerchief, painting something. The reality – we both know that, along with all architects – is actually very rigid. Specifically, I think in the Czech Republic, it is still tightly bound to the notion that modern architecture must be clean, strict, and minimalist.

What are you doing about it?
I have always wanted to lean more towards a life model than a professional model. I have always sought other paths—those that would excite me and those that would refresh my profession a bit. That I could also be outside and take impulses from other and differently educated people. Even in school, I found elitism suspicious. It comes from the people teaching there. It is implanted into students. But a person who studies architecture doesn’t have a patent on anything. If someone has a patent, it’s the doctor who studies medicine.
And it turns out that even a university-educated doctor only has a patent on a certain type of approach to healing. You discover how many types of healing there are. We should tone down our egos a bit. Heck, I myself should tone down my ego a lot! We architects are shaped by the world around us, not the other way around.
 

Interaction with architecture and with man

This touches on the well-known theme of whether man shapes architecture or architecture shapes man. We know that these are interlinked vessels. Interaction applies. Of course, what a person builds shapes them based on their studies or inherited habits. But at the same time, what they build is also perceived subconsciously, spontaneously, and influences us during our daily hustle and bustle without us having time to think about it. Engaging in the philosophy of design in our country either slips into superficial phrases and formalities or is considered too general, not specific. However, I can’t imagine the first and fundamental step to designing without philosophy. Philosophy, after all, begins every human creation by its very nature, let alone creation with such public implications. I believe that the magic of success is closely related to the need to clarify the basic philosophy of the project right from the start. Your philosophy is interesting. Perhaps also because you studied with Miroslav Šik.

Family house, Louňovice

I think it’s not just about Šik. I’m going back to some ordinary human energy or the joy of living. Šik brought a different perspective and perception of things into the school. We were taught to perceive shiny, white, perfect, functionalist things. He brought us grey, devilish, military, sad, punk, perfect and wild things. But how you walk through life is about your mindset. I told myself that life is more important than work. So I seek a model of life that consists of being versatile. I don’t want to be just an architect who designs; I want to be a person who builds, draws, runs in the woods, digs with a pickaxe, boxes, or loves. I am convinced that when I am on my deathbed, I will not remember any of my buildings but will remember my life experiences.

What do you enjoy most in the design and construction process?
The strongest moments in the design process occur for me in the studio with music and brainstorming and then on the construction site. Ukrainian diggers, naked to the waist, are for me a symbol of resilience, vitality, and mystery. We Czechs are said to have a sense of humor, but it’s not like we laugh at ourselves… I’m not talking about the orange-smile-hare-krishna stuff; I’m talking about the vital energy I feel from Croats or South Americans—or Russians. I have a political issue with Russians, but I can’t help it; I’m fascinated by Eastern Slavic energy. What really bores me is the whiny, superior Western Europe that has achieved everything and is debating whether their pants should have curves or squares and what the colors of mountain bikes are currently in. On the other hand, I realize that this very civility allows me to live the life I do. In the Czech Republic, it’s not really about life, for which I am grateful. I don’t understand the world presented to me through media. I live differently; I seek differently and, fortunately, I find differently. Phew, thank goodness it’s here…

Selling architecture

Even people educated in social sciences today speak of living in a time of dissolution - the entropy of the value structure. Values do not change, but we struggle to read them and find a common stance towards them. How do you manage to have clients with whom you can do architecture?

Family house, Veliš near Jičín

The older I get, the more I care about clients on a human level. Before, I saw a lot of buildings behind them, a potential job. And now I increasingly see concrete people and their lives. The most beautiful would be if a person, who wants a house à la? "Central Group", came to me, and I designed something in that spirit, but modern and peculiar. I would completely overcome myself, my schemas that I had hammered into myself, deny my education, and be an empty vessel. I can’t do that yet. I think we should respect the people around us more in terms of their state of mind and their desires. When a client comes to us, we try to sell ourselves. We rarely cooperate with them.

However, at the other pole is the risk that the client does not respond even to your valid arguments that are in their own interest. These arguments often rely on an understanding of the "inner order" of architecture, which has very few direct ties to the resulting material form. And that can sometimes be beyond the horizon of the client's understanding, because they feel much more strongly whether that sink will be light beige or light pink.
I feel that many clients work well with me based on human comfort. Maybe they feel a connection to me somehow. Communication, non-intellectuality. We talk plainly, normally. I try not to have a distance from the clients. On first meetings, clients come nicely dressed; at subsequent ones, they do not.
But that’s something that has only started to emerge recently. The older I get, the less I care about how it turns out for architects. I’ve understood I have no obligation to the architectural community. I don’t need a reputation. I have obligations, let’s say, to God, to myself, to my close people, to society represented by the people I meet, the ones I buy shoes from, or fuel my car from. I’m just one of millions of little crickets who have been ignited by the engine of life, and they do what they can. Nothing more, nothing less. Beauty. Life is a mission. Who are we? Where are we going? Where did we walk from? Heck, I hope to figure that out someday.

Family house, Čisovice near Prague

The need to gain the client's trust, to understand who they are and what they want, cannot be debated. But it’s also about how to actually fulfill that with individual customers. What kind of clients actually come to you? What strategy have you devised to ensure that clients, to whom you can offer your services, come to you?
If I were to describe my clients, they are open-minded people. They always have a little quirkiness in them. Even if the person wears a dark suit, you can read it from their behavior, notes, laughter. So we share a certain quirkiness. And a non-academic approach. I don’t have many sad clients who are depressed about their lives and want to make up for it with perfect architecture. My clients are not much of "image-makers". Cooperation can be facilitated using low tools. That’s how you get deeper to the essence.

It probably depends on what norm or ideal we relate it to. What is actually our usual perception of an architect? There hasn’t been a free society here from 1938 to 1989, so we can’t really guess that today. Several generations have passed during that time for whom the field of architecture was completely erased from their lives, nonexistent. And when it did exist, it was so distant and unattainable because it only occurred at the level of state investments. Or at the level of investments by the upper ten thousand. That people built houses themselves in the suburbs was not perceived by anyone as architecture. In terms of societal understanding and grasp, architecture in our country has, without exaggeration, not existed for half a century. It was a suppressed and tolerated profession because the regime needed it for representation. Free professions are the first ones that any totalitarian regime eliminates. The system does not need architects because ideology dictates the philosophy of building, and construction engineers understand the technique of building.
We live in a time that is generally exceptional, which is just shaping the standards of a free civil society. After fifty years of a deranged period, we cannot just cut off the past and say that now we are normal. Suddenly, out of nowhere, we are emerging as if a free societal debate on architecture had not been halted for fifty years. And that’s why we must discuss themes that have the widest - societal - general character. We must discuss generalities because generalities are also exceptional in our country today. I think that everyone today is actually discovering what architecture is in a free civil society. The way you describe the philosophy of your office is precisely what you have figured out that architecture is.
But it’s a very subjective view. I think it’s generally not very functional for most people. I think most people do not need churches to connect with God. I assert that you do not need churches. You carry God within you. If you greet a dandelion every day, you have also made a prayer. In the same way, we do not need the image of an architect. In doing so, we may just fall into a ditch, but we will lift our self-esteem and freedom. People will start to respect us not for how we look, how we speak, and how perfectly we see everything, but for how we handle our thing. My model is Inspector Colombo. A loser at first glance, but as smart as a witch. You can’t get this person down. But he looks like a vagabond.

Family house, Stříbrná Skalice

Not everyone has the gift of cleverness. It seems to me that to be a good creator or user of architecture, you don’t actually need much cleverness. It seems to me that you mainly need to be a sensitive and perceptive person. Architecture satisfies human senses. And only the senses set the state of your spirit and soul. I am concerned with how to offer the understanding of the architect's profession - how to offer the architect's services to our market.
How to get architecture to the people? With less elitism. Humor. Self-irony. Hard work bit by bit. Otherwise, I don’t know. What do you think?

You have a successful studio that draws people in with demands for architecture. So I think your answer could be interesting. The first possibility that crosses my mind is that the reason is that customers find such trust in you that they don’t really care what you build for them as long as it fits within the overall cost framework.
Not at all.

Then you must have to communicate that with them beforehand. And that interests me.
When two parties sit down together and negotiate something, if you are a perceptive person, you subconsciously read the other person in a way other than through conversation. When we exchange words, that’s a certain level. But you, as an animal, as Jirka Schmidt, have some feeling of me as an animal. If we were wolves, we would maintain some distance in nature, we would sniff each other… Atavisms, I think, function. Clients probably read me as a normal guy who doesn’t look down on them and is also amused by their own imperfection and the imperfections of those people. And they probably see me as a cheerful person who enjoys life. This again means that it doesn’t involve drinking and dancing every night. It’s about an inner setting where you wake up in the morning and are grateful that you exist, grateful that your leg moves, grateful that you can have a drink, and grateful that you can do your job with love. I have habituated myself that when I come into an empty office in the morning, I greet it. It’s childish, but through that I express my gratitude every day for being able to do it and buy things like skis for my children. If I were a car repairman, I would probably greet my workshop too. I believe that this would also help me repair those cars better.

Family house, Louňovice near Prague

So with you, as a client, I begin to feel a humility for the service that I need from you.
I come across as not being too harsh. Often, people come to me with requests that I don’t like or that seem silly to me, but I never send them away, saying: "What you want is silly. But you’re adults, so of course, in the end, your will decides. I, as Kraus, tell you, that it’s nonsense, but it doesn’t matter because your life is much more valuable than what we are discussing now. We aren’t creating a golden turd that will change the world here. However, our personal self-improvement through the compromises we have to make towards each other will change the world. Our way of communicating will shift this meeting room, and it will pass it on further."

Psychology and the social order

You move the lives of those affected. You might just be addressing an issue that decides whether a person will pay a mortgage of 15 or 30 thousand a month. Regardless, the construction dictates a whole range of your life processes, without you even being aware of it in everyday operations. I see that in the debates between the architect and his customer, the most common topics are those that set the fundamental parameters of their lives.
That's right.

Renovation of a barn and a house, Kozovazy

From your words, I understand that when negotiating with a client, you don’t want to have an idea of where to steer it for a long time but will wait for what the client wants from you.
Yes, you expressed it more succinctly and in a shorter sentence. In one film, they were interrogating a prisoner. He then said that from your questions, I learned more about you than you learned from my answers. My wife, Petra, says: if I talk about myself, I learn nothing because I already know it all. But it's fucking hard; I can't do it; it’s a tough, tough, and bitter learning process.

How do you persuade people of your architectural opinion? Where is the boundary with your conscience? What if the client requests an outright mistake? How do you explain to the customer that what they are fixated on is not wise?
We might also part ways. But calmly. The customer sees that our energies simply did not resonate. That has happened, but very rarely. They are always very significant examples for me of human encounters. I won’t voluntarily make him a house with turrets because I find it unnecessary and expensive. When the customer insists, I try to understand where their mindset comes from. Why do they want to dwell in such muck when they could have a house filled with light and possibly something completely simple. When I figure it out - I would be really good then, not that I'm figuring it out; I can’t manage to do it even with close people - I try to turn a disadvantage into an advantage. To shift it into a certain bizarreness that already has quality and meaning. When you find out that it truly doesn’t work, it’s necessary to say: "Hey, nothing is happening. Find another person. Because working with me will be tedious for you. And I won't enjoy it with you either."

Among Czech architects, I estimate roughly ten studies for one realization. I can also confirm this from my own experience. How do you keep track of the project concept that is being realized?
The things on the project or on the construction site that I truly care about, I usually keep to myself. I always remember lawyers who say, look, in this dialogue, outline twenty points, but keep two very complicated ones. The other side feels like they won eighteen times and you won twice. But you know you held onto those two points that matter. Sometimes I even do it in such a way that I know what I want from the building but don’t show it right away. I know that I want to cook a pure garlic soup, so I add the garlic very gradually because I know the person wouldn’t be able to handle all the garlic at the beginning. We will get to harmony in gradual steps. It’s a bit of cunning.

This implies that you are probably a good psychologist. You can read and understand people. And you can create a strategy for selling them what you think they need. I observe that psychological traits are today actually a condition for successfully performing the architect profession. Or in other words: to have developed emotional intelligence. The architect interacts with all participants in the architectural event. They stand right in the middle of a group of people from various socio-economic backgrounds, different professions, different life situations, and different personal traits. Officials, craftsmen, art historians, scientists, specialized designers, construction material traders, construction technologies, financial institutions, etc. What do you think about that?
In architectural school, psychology should be taught, in my opinion. I have often realized that school should teach love for clients. At school, you learn how to design a building, but no one teaches you how to communicate with a person. Then you leave school and feel frustrated that no one wants what you think you have learned.

How do you perceive success in your profession?

Family house, Jevany

The word success is very relative. I have to defend myself against it a little. Those truly successful people live a full life, and in that life, they learn something. And they resonate with the world. That’s success for me. The word success accounts for three percent of your life, while the other ninety-seven percent can be complete emptiness and sadness.
But you are absolutely right about the psychologist. It’s a precise statement that applies not just to architects. I have often said to myself that truly successful people, like Steve Jobs, visionaries who are also good business people, have something within them that connects them to people. Generally, a person is successful when they are connected to people. Everything we do, we do among ourselves. Let’s not kid ourselves about anything else. We are not doing anything for a shark or a heavenly apple or for a stone sitting by the way. They don’t care. They don’t need us, and we don’t do anything for them. Sarkozy doesn’t care about all the stones. Once I jokingly said that I would like to design a house for a dog. That the client would be a dog.

Why?
I would have to find another language of communication. Touches. Growls. Licking. I would step out of my humanity. I would be a creature. We measure everything with humanity. I feel limited in that. I often look at grass and wonder, what does it see? Is it sleeping, that grass? I would like to experience stepping out…

But architecture is a result of some social order and some values. From this, I read that if today, an architect is not exceptionally honest, talented, and hardworking, and does not have restitution or similar luck, they can’t really practice their profession today. They cannot because the product they offer is not actually defined in the market. That’s why architecture practically isn’t in the market.
Perhaps there are not enough people who would name it. That’s where you come in, perhaps. Just people who don’t have to solve every day whether that piece of wood should be light or not.

National Library - competition design

Definition of craftsmanship

There are very few people who would also see their self-realization in interpreting architecture to the public - to a wide mass audience. The main reason is probably the fact that today's existence must be based on completely different activities. So honest work in architectural journalism, analysis, and interpretation - not to mention architectural research and development - cannot be practiced today in our country. It still relates to the fact that there is no defined product for the market, and therefore there is no market demand for services related to architecture as a mental product. Or do we have some generally accepted definition of that craft?
Do you think so?

I actually believe that the fundamental reason for the problems of our architecture lies in the fact that we do not have a named - defined product - an identified product.
What do you think would happen if we defined it?

It would open a path to understanding the essence of architecture. People would begin to weigh differently how they invest their lifelong savings, how they predict a large part of their lives.
There is room for relativization, and that always frightens me. For me, as a simpleton, it’s better to relate to concrete subjective things on my own path. I do not deny it; it’s a narrow view. Relativization has led Western Europe to decadence.

Žižkov Exhibition 20

On your website, you write that the production of your studio is anchored in the contemporary world.
I don’t like retro things, that kind of nostalgia.

Do you prefer to work in a team or alone?
Unfortunately, I’m not much of a team player. I think that is quite outdated today and a disadvantage. I realize that it’s a bit of a blind alley. It means I have to do everything by myself. But I’m just set up that way by nature. But I think the world is heading in exactly the opposite direction. I have people around me who are similar; we create a network, support each other. We know about each other. The product is the result of our joint activities. But everyone is riding for themselves.

You advertise that you produce things with passion and individuality.
I respect life energy. Vitality. When you wake up in the morning, excited that you exist. Michal Kuzemenský calls it romantic machismo. My approach is to solve the problem and not overthink it. Petra says she doesn’t want solutions from me; she just needs to discuss things...:-) I immediately come up with a solution and get to it. I think up buildings very quickly. They also look like it.

Key projects

What were the key projects that brought you to your current position?
It started with the mentioned exhibition. I ran around getting the money and everything around it and found out that I could manage things. Then came the house in Říčany, where I enjoyed the principle of cheapness and modesty. That has stayed with me ever since. I like non-snobby and non-luxurious things. This also includes the Transcentrum hotel. Although it wasn’t realized, it was characterized by my ability to convince a client, who was a corporation, of a building that looked like some insect. I realized that it was possible. Úvaly - a development project - multiplicity. The building in Stodůlky was a great experience because I also built it. The house in Stříbrná Skalica was for me the peak of punk. An impure form. I told the client I was inspired by the slums. I found out that even in the environment of "Czech strictness," different things could be done. The house in Jevany - experience with a good location of luxury.
And lastly, my own house - love and sorrow, trees and blue sky, river, my loved ones.

Family house, Jevany

Would the title "Punk Homes" suit you?
I still have the feeling that I am looking for my own path at the cost of losses and victories. That my houses may be strange. But "punk homes" is an exaggeration. I'm not that good. And I also listen to A-ha, that’s far from punk.

I also like the term "careless elegance."
Yes, carelessness can be.

Is there something I haven't asked, and you would like to say?
There is much, fortunately. But we don’t have to say everything; mysteries, secrets, and reading between the lines are enormous depths. Conversations characterize a person only minimally. The truth about me and about you is seen only by the heavens and ourselves.

Thank you for the interview