Interview with David Kopecký, ksa.

In these days, you are finishing a villa in Černošice, which the professional public has been eagerly awaiting. Do you see it as a groundbreaking project?
Recently, we completed three family houses in Košice, Senec, and Černošice. The projects in Senec and Černošice were developed in Bratislava, authored by Jano Studený and Martin Vojta. In Prague, we still have an implementation project for a house in Okoř, to which we dedicated over two years and which will probably not be realized.
Černošice is the first building by our office realized in Bohemia. They confirm the potential of the modular concept of residential buildings that we have been developing for many years. Inexpensive technologies and construction methods do not detract from the strength of the original geometry that allows generating a range of variations tailored to the specifics of the land. I perceive Černošice as a pilot project, one of the houses that we can also build with this system in a more subtle form, such as a lightweight prefabricated structure with a higher degree of glazing and connection with the exterior.
It is pivotal for us that Černošice stands, and for their popularization, it may ultimately be good that they are realized with plaster.

Perhaps a redundant question, nevertheless: How do you understand the module? Can it be defined?
The modular concept abstracts the operational units of the house into individual orthogonal volumes/boxes/modules from which the entire organism of the house is assembled.

In the case of the house in Stupava, in Košice, or other projects, primarily sculptural volumes are applied, determined mainly by orthogonal relationships. How can the Černošice villa be perceived in the context of your previous work?
All our buildings are designed as modular structures, offering flexible space and thoroughly considering the parameters of the land. Their spiritual dimension stems from maximum simplification of form and consistent utilization of the character of the given place. The sculptural formations in Stupava and Košice are determined by constrained plots. Only in Senec is the shape of the house programmatically formal.
In Košice, where we built in a narrow valley, we struggled for a long time to find a solution for the very sloped plot. And now, a bit further away, someone is building a structure that is indistinguishable in raw construction from ours. That is a precedent that speaks clearly.
We first used a looser organization of the layout in the competition for the expansion of the embassy in London (2001) and the withdrawal of modules with a non-orthogonal envelope in 2002 in the project of a prefabricated family house intended for a large plot in Babice near Brno, but the client could not wait any longer after two years of development.

Could you elaborate on the concept of the Černošice villa and its construction principles?
The advancement in Černošice is in the overall relaxation of geometry on the site that invites it. Elementary mathematics plus the derivation of the envelope. Through spatial play with blocks, an evolved, organic shape is achieved which grows from the module of the basement embedded in the slope up to the height with an unobstructed view of the Berounka valley.
The touch of the object with the terrain at a minimal area frees the garden and minimizes the costs of establishing the building.
The fundamental code, as with previous realizations, is the simplification of operational units into elementary square modules. New in this building is their mutual shifting in space and the pulling back of the resulting configuration by the perimeter envelope into a compact package.
Everything is achieved with standard construction technology at minimal cost.

Can we even speak of inspirations in your projects? During an earlier meeting, you mentioned Niemeyer's unbuilt design for the Museum of Modern Art in Caracas...
I remember that beautiful photo of Niemayer's pyramid stuck in the mountains, which Miro Kurčík had hanging on the wall in his studio at the Academy. So we knew well how to build on a slope right from the start.

When we talked about Černošice some time ago, you used words from the organic realm such as flower or stem. Is that a coincidence? Alternatively, do you refer to the villa in other terms? You also mentioned cosmic objects...
The symbolism of the cube/obelisk is captured in the opening scene of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey as a representation of the activity of a higher form of intelligence in the universe. In this sense, the boxes are essentially human, because in a sufficiently strong gravitational field, they best correspond to human motion activities.
Černošice goes further, maintaining the logic of the internal orthogonal space, but its overall configuration simulates simpler forms, an evolved organism, and incorporates mimicry of the surrounding nature.

Could you describe how your studio operates? You have offices in Prague and Bratislava...
Currently, we have a team of six people. We mostly communicate through the network. We work together on competitions and jointly develop concepts. We divide the execution according to the work. The Černošice and Senec projects, for example, were developed exclusively in Bratislava.
The office is primarily made up of talents who believe in our future and are willing to work for minimal wages. In Bratislava, it was primarily Martin Vojta. The main man in Prague is Pavel Mejtský.

For some time, both of you recently lived abroad. To what extent did your stay in Great Britain relate to your profession?
In London, we once met with Jano Studený and later received one of the first architecture awards for our very first realization in Senec and for Stupava. I have already spent a few years of my life in London. It is a city to which we return.
My last almost year-long stay associated with realization for inspiring London clients, when you have a busy work schedule, a family accommodated in the center, and the option to fly once a week to the office in Prague, is an experience I will not forget. That’s a way to live.

What inspired you about the environment?
London's buildings from Foster's office are incredible organisms, sci-fi constructions, and construction technologies used coldly at the edge of possibilities. I consider the Prague Octopus to be an extraordinary achievement for its aesthetic qualities and particularly for its healing effect on Czech rigidity, but the last realizations by Kaplický seem a bit like a theatrical prop next to Foster's covering of the British Museum or Gherkin. Perhaps it’s about the level of rationality that cannot simply be crossed, about the difference between the consistent pushing of the boundaries of building art and complete freedom of form.
London is a strong inspiration and an invaluable school.

So you attribute excessive rationality to the Czech environment. Does that mean you essentially agree with Švách's characterization of Czech architectural production as "strict"?
Rigidity is not rationality. I do not want to evaluate the Czech scene. Experiencing youth in communism is a brutal legacy. Our architecture is still without experiment, rigidly clinging to certainties. But we are the descendants of Santini, Gočár, Hubáček, Prager... One day we will start it here.
The principle of the work is aptly defined by a quote from Bresson: Order creates. Chaos breathes life. In the context of your question, it can only be added that one without the other does not provide a comprehensive joy.

During our conversation, you mentioned that the project for the London production office did not go through due to the "radicality" of the solution. You also profile yourself as one of the practices with the most distinct principles in the Central European space. To what extent is compromise acceptable to you when designing?
That distinctiveness, if you wish, is determined by the intensity of work on the concept, but compromise in the sense of rigorously searching for the maximum solution that would also satisfy the investor is an integral part of it.
But I remember well one situation when we were uncompromising towards the investor. Years ago, Jan Tabor organized a mega symposium at the Vienna Kunsthalle, a concept of installations by young offices, which he announced as a manifesto of boldness, greatness, limits of how far one can go, etc.
On the morning before the opening, I bought rollers and a few cans of red paint, there was a lift available at the Kunsthalle... Within a few minutes, Jano and I thoroughly fulfilled the proclaimed task. It was beautiful, but instead of euphoria, it was followed by an extempore with the curator, and it almost ended in a lawsuit for damaging the majesty of the Vienna House of Art. How Mr. Tabor imagined a manifesto of courage and audacity without risk, I still do not understand.

However, in London, during the realization of the reconstruction of the headquarters of a successful British advertising and film production, I significantly underestimated the care for the investor and the necessity to verify whether he fully understands the concept he approved on paper. Before completion, decorators took over the building to enhance the raw environment suitably. The models of lamps and shelving modules from the London realization now travel around exhibitions.

And what about the mentioned compromise? I assume there was a certain moment when you could not help but notice that your solution would not be accepted. Did you consider adapting?
Here it was not a problem of compromise. I did not realize for which financially strong client I was actually working, what comfort of collaboration he was used to, and I could not react quickly enough. One learns from mistakes.

You practically do not work on commercial projects: Is this a rule or rather a consequence of your distinct view on creation?
So far, we have not managed to establish constructive communication with commercial investors, but we are working on it. Low-budget houses, to which you devote long-term research, cannot sustain the office.
The technically demanding project in Stupava took us three years to resolve, and I would vouch for every detail of it. Back then, I could not believe we were building such a house, and I will probably never believe that the investor dismantled it a few years later for social unacceptability. I have never experienced comparable space and light in an interior. In its category, it was a hard-to-beat, perfectly functioning house. Whoever has not experienced it inhabited in operation will never believe it. Fortunately, a few people were there.

Material played a crucial role - copilit. I remember that, at that time, it was also used by Wiel Arets for his police station in Boxtel (1994 - 1997). Is it a coincidence, or could it have been some temporally relevant topic?
The concept in Stupava is from 1996, and at that time, Herzog and de Meuron were experimenting with transparent houses as well.
The solution of the concept was related to the need for a transparent and affordable envelope. The goal was to bring as much light as possible into the house on a narrow plot nestled between two neighboring buildings while maintaining privacy in the interior. We considered several options, including copilit, from which two beautiful heating plants are realized in Bratislava. The copilit facade was ultimately chosen by the investor himself, and none of us thought back then that his wife would not be willing to live in such an exposed house.

With the dismantling of the Stupava house, one "article" disappeared. Have you ever thought about realizing a new variant of this building? Is the theme of transparency and orthogonality of the modular assembly still alive for you?
I consider Stupava to be our sovereignly best realization, which significantly preceded its time, and I believe that one day we will build such a type of house again.

However, let me interject with a heretical thought: As we will see later, you advocate for the completion of the house by the activities of the builder. Can we not view the mentioned dismantling of the Stupava object as an extreme manifestation of that activity? Thus, within the given conceptual framework, can we register the demise as a "legitimate" act?
Thank you for this painful question. Yes. The house was deliberately built as a neutral platform intended for further completion by its users, but we really did not anticipate the dismantling of the glass envelope. The cladding was designed from a sophisticated industrial facade system by Pilkington with thermal properties guaranteed by the manufacturer, which was additionally doubled. The envelope was equipped with blinds against overheating, and although malicious tongues claim otherwise today, it functioned well!
The reconstruction of the house, which took place after two years of operation, was initiated by the cracking of the underfloor heating in the ground floor and repeated leaking from poorly constructed roofing. The envelope of the house was dismantled during the reconstruction definitely for aesthetic reasons based on the firm decision of the investor's wife to live in a traditional house. It was cruel for us, but in a sense, everything happened according to the proclaimed program.

What is your stance on competitions? By the way, in the case of your design for the new building of the National Library, "organic shapes on a stem" appear just as in Černošice.
Competitions are fertile ground for further development. Minimal bureaucracy and short concentration periods when you have to reach deep down. We usually find the solution a couple of days after submission. We are still working on the National Library. Gradually, the energy we devoted to competitions is returning to us.

Are you talking about the design for Letná or another assignment? Does that mean you are drawing solutions for the drawer?
I do not consider drawer work a waste of energy; moreover, I cannot influence it. Once you start thinking seriously about something, the topic then lives its own life. And one morning, perhaps even after a few years, you'll wake up and suddenly have a solution that you may have been searching for in vain during the competition deadline. That also has significance and can be capitalized.

At the Venice Biennale in 2002, you presented the concept of "Architecture Without Architects". Are you still working with it? How has it evolved?
For the Venice Biennale with the theme Next, we prepared a study of future housing. Modular next is a design of a house construction system in the form of a gradually growing structure/mushroom, made of units of apartments that owners can design themselves within the system from the outside and inside. The system has a social dimension; it is communication through architecture. Programmatic anarchy realized within software that ensures non-conflicted functioning of the entire building. Modular is the ghetto of the future, a habitat fused with Wikipedia, architecture without architects!
The modular concept is current and evolves across our projects and realizations. The presentation of Modular in its extreme future form for Venice exceeded our capabilities at the time, but one day we will see such houses.

It sounds something like this: Imagine construction systems that allow you to decide on the form of the building, or its part, in which you want to live. Imagine a society where architects take you as an equal partner with the right to your own aesthetic experiments and provide you with the intellectual backing, perfectly functioning hardware, and easily manageable software. Imagine the future...
…technology of spatial digital printing activating new design processes such as replicating shapes and surfaces of existing objects, which you can mutually combine and change their scale, texture, surface hardness, and other parameters. Recyclable panels can be designed by you within the system or selected from a catalog, gradually supplemented and changed...

It sounds a bit like advertising for utopian visions. What time horizon are you considering? If I understand correctly, you are speaking about a certain form of parametric design, with which experiment has been conducted in the environment of Western higher education in recent years... But what if I argue that the system functions on the condition that the population is aesthetically, technically, and otherwise educated? But if it isn’t? Doesn’t the free realization of one’s spatial vision represent too dangerous an intervention in public space? You mention anarchy; should we resign completely on urbanism?
It’s developing quickly. Twenty to thirty years. Should we patent it?
I mention anarchy in the visual sense, realized through a building system within software that safely ensures the non-conflicted functioning of the organism of a house or part of a city.
Specifically, this means that your choice of location and configuration of your apartment is confronted with the choices of all previous applicants so that the growth of the building proceeds healthily. Thus, it is a certain form of spatial urbanism, controlled construction. The difference, however, is that the control software of the building does not monitor aesthetic but only physical parameters of growth.
Furthermore, it is essential to understand that Modular cannot aspire to a blanket solution for residential architecture. I quote from the catalog: Modular is a colonization scheme of an individualized society, does not compete with traditional architecture; it is another layer in the urban landscape.
Modular is simply an alternative for a group or society of people who want to emancipate themselves from the limited taste of the architect and have enough energy and creativity to shape their own housing.

However, back to the point: Can you trace where your respect for somewhat spontaneous completion of a house by its users - that is, the approach to which most architects obstinately resist - originated?
The concept of open architecture emerged as a reaction to the fascination with the aesthetic potential of the variability of the inhabited Stupava house, which was programmatically designed as an experiment, a purely functional empty space, a platform intended for further completion through user activities.
My admiration for the aesthetics of marginal architecture, which arises spontaneously beyond the control of fashion trends, was significantly reinforced by a book published for the cult exhibition of photographer Bernard Rudolfski Architecture Without Architects, which Eva Eisler brought us from New York in the early nineties. Slums, ghettos, agglomerations of the third world, and pragmatic residential formations of ancient cultures. An incredible wealth lying entirely beyond the possibilities of the aesthetics of commercial architecture. It was decided.
The manifestations of life are more current and richer than architecture, Jano Studený once wrote about Stupava for publication in the magazine Architect.
It was simple, real, and clear!

The Stupava house was a revelation, it created euphoria, and it rightfully received all available nominations and awards for architecture. To this day, I can hear the exclamations That's it! That's it! from the rejuvenated Rostislav Šváchy.
Stupava and the concept of open architecture won the competition for the installation at the National Pavilion in Venice, and it was necessary to decide how to utilize this opportunity.

However, Stupava was ultimately not exhibited in Venice...
I was thirty-seven then, and I managed to meaningfully misuse the resources of the National Gallery and the Ministry of Culture intended for the presentation of Stupava at the architecture fair to finance research. We left Stupava in Slovakia and designed a building system of the future for Venice based on a combination of a flexible modular skeleton and polymer panels produced by spatial printing technology from a digital model selected by the client.
I hired a team of 3D programmers led by the wizard Jan Pajůrek, and after a few months of work, we meticulously designed a complete building system. Had it not been for the fact that digital printing technology was still in its infancy at that time, we might have just needed to perform strength tests and start production. It was all so exciting that there was no time left even for the exhibition’s concept.
We ultimately conceived the exhibition as a manifesto and did not show most of the work. A few people understood, and the shock of most of the Czech visitors to the Venice pavilion will, in time, be redeemed. The results will come.

What are you currently working on?
We are gradually trying to focus on larger buildings and urban complexes. We are exploring possibilities for cooperation with more experienced partners and trying to communicate with developers and larger investors.
We dedicated over two years to a demanding static solution and details of a shell house with a tilting wooden envelope. The project rises on four staircase pillars above the land of the protected monument zone Okoř park.
In several unrealized studies, we addressed the topic of development fully integrated into the terrain.
In Bratislava, the construction of an extension of Jan’s family house, one of our latest projects, is underway: a fresh formation above the city, a smaller thing that we expect a lot from.

You mention larger investors; does this change your attitude towards architecture? The personality of a developer is usually not inclined to experiments, just like a builder of their own family house...
An example that confirms the opposite is the concept of the new Prague shopping center Šestka by Marek Chalupa and his associates.
A developer at a certain level can conversely become an inspiring collaborator, and a servile brief, which you probably mean, can be transformed into the higher mathematics of the effectiveness of the concept. And that must lead to experiment in the sense of seeking a perfectly functioning organism of the whole while minimizing costs. That’s how every great architecture is created. In nature, there is also no ineconomically constructed plant - and that’s why they are all so beautiful.

How do you perceive yourselves in the Czech or even global architectural scene?
We have something to offer. I believe we are reaching a stage where our projects can bring joy to a broader audience. We are evolving. We did not publish anything for six years; we are working intensively, things are happening, but no one knows much about our work yet.

The possibility of realizing projects always depends on the existence of an enlightened investor capable of understanding and accepting the idea. Have you considered teaching at one of the universities? The academic environment usually provides more room for experiments and testing visions.
Visions can only be tested through their realizations. Teaching, for it to make sense, requires an extraordinary energy investment, which certainly pays off, but for now, we prefer direct action.
We are the students of Přikryl. He didn’t give us any other option to communicate with him than to mobilize all our inner forces. It was a crucible, and I will never forget it; had it not been for him, we might have given up long ago.
But we are still alive.

Louis Kahn once said,* that if he had to choose another profession, he would write new fairy tales. What would you do? Is any other career path conceivable for you personally?
I don’t know yet; changing mythology is quite an ambitious task. I would probably continue to invent and travel more with my wonderful wife and daughter.

Thank you for the interview.
Kateřina Lopatová

---

The interview was conducted in writing, through several exchanges and complementations of text during March to May 2008

* In a speech at the symposium in Tel Aviv, December 20, 1973.