Interview with Roman Brychta

Prof. Mgr. akad. arch. Roman Brychta (*1967 Vysoké Mýto) in his Prague studio at Bořislavka.

I usually start chronologically, but this time I have to ask right away, why did you establish your own studio after eighteen years at Projektil?
It wasn't easy to leave Projektil. I helped establish it and slowly built the brand. However, I felt the need for change and a desire to manage all my time myself.

At the beginning of your career, you won a major architectural competition.
Yes, it was a competition for the Library and Information Centre in Hradec Králové. Before that, we had already won one competition. It was a project for the National Technical Library in Prague (NTK), which was created at a time when we were still working with Václav Králíček.

I also wanted to ask you in more detail about him. Perhaps a slightly unjustly forgotten personality. He was a member of Hubáček's SIAL, collaborated with Ivo Oberstein, and after the revolution worked with Martin Kotík at Omicron-K.
Václav Králíček played a crucial role not only in the competition project for the NTK, but he is one of the three people who influenced my professional life. One was Emil Přikryl at the academy, then there was Soňa Ryndová, who accepted me for alternative service (replacement service instead of basic military service) at Frágnerka, where we talked about architecture with Pavel Rydlo, had books at our disposal, prepared exhibitions, and touched original plans from, for example, Bohuslav Fuchs. That’s where I got a taste of history and craftsmanship.
After completing my civilian service, I had no idea what to do next, and Soňa suggested Václav’s studio, which at the time was designing a cable car to Turkey, which seemed interesting to me. I lived on Kulaťák (Vítězné náměstí in Dejvice), and Václav had a studio (on the street) Pod Juliskou. Václav accepted me, and besides the cable car, we designed several projects for Karlín together, including Corsa (which was eventually realized by Ricardo Bofill in 2000). The building Pod Juliskou now houses the ČVUT sports center, but previously classrooms were rented here, which served as studios, and Vladimír Krátký, Tomáš Brix, Šafer and Hájek also worked here, and we all met in the wide hallway.
From Frágnerka, where Masák or Švácha visited Soňa Ryndová and we brainstormed exhibitions together, I entered an intense architectural environment. Together with Tomáš Brix, Vladimír Krátký, and Václav Králíček, we designed the aforementioned transformation of the ČKD hall in Karlín for Serge Borenstein and many other verification studies. At Václav Králíček’s studio, I got to work on big buildings. Pavel Joba, who returned from Berlin, was looking for a place, so I brought him to Václav. Together, at the end of Pernerova street, where today the butterfly stands (AFI Karlín Butterfly by CMC architects), we designed Eurotel's headquarters. As students, Petr Lešek and Adam Halíř also came to the studio. In 1999, Václav and I won the competition for a retirement home in Písek. Pavel Joba started M1. I, Václav, and Petr Lešek created an architectural association, with which we subsequently managed to win the competition for the NTK. After winning the competition, we were of course excited. Petr, Adam, and I borrowed a Fabia and headed to Germany to check out the buildings built from Copilitu. I remember that we spent one night sleeping in the small Fabia in a parking lot by a gas station. Then the project fell asleep for four years, and nothing happened.

Composition of the studio Roman Brychta Architects in 2021. Jan Karásek, Roman Brychta, Vladimír Votava, Eliška Martínková. Currently, the team also includes Sami Abdulnour.

So you're not classmates, but you only met in Václav Králíček's studio?
I met both of them after school in Václav’s studio. The building Pod Juliskou attracted many graduates from the faculty because several good studios were located on one corridor. However, I mostly met with younger years because I graduated from technical school in 1991, where my peers were Janek Schindler, Ludvík Seko, Marek Chalupa, Boris Redčenkov, and others. I then moved to the academy, where I just missed Láďa Kuba and David Kopecký, who were just graduating.
In 2002, we agreed to part ways from Václav Králíček and founded a joint office with Petr Lešek and Adam Halíř, and we looked for builders to join our team. From the guys at HŠH, we knew about Ondřej Hofmeister, who worked on the Archdiocesan Museum in Olomouc. He accepted our offer, and a four-member Projektil was formed.

Let’s go back in history. You are from Vysoké Mýto, where you mainly encounter historical buildings. You graduated from high school in Hradec Králové, where you could already have been influenced by modern Gočár’s architecture. When did you start seriously being interested in architecture?
I’m not much of a studying type. In my youth I mostly played football. I specifically went to Hradec for a technical construction school. My dad graduated from the construction school in my hometown of Vysoké Mýto. I've been drawn to construction since I was little. At home, there was a drawing board in the corner where my dad drew garages. At the construction school in Hradec, I played more football than studied. I played for the youth team in Hradec Spartak but didn't advance to the higher youth teams, so I returned to Vysoké Mýto, where my brother and I dug our way up to the second youth league, which was my greatest football success.
All of this happened in the last century when we played in ragged shoes and in winter we ran on the field in boots. Our coach was also the workshop manager at Karosa, so we all had heavy, nailed work shoes with leather soles that slid on the snow. Cinder pitches were standard fare. To this day, I have cinder embedded in my knee under the skin. I perceived Hradec architecture more peripherally than intentionally, for example when I ran across the bridge over the Orlice during daily training. These experiences later proved crucial for understanding the place when we made the scientific library on the waterfront in Hradec.

1996 - Exhibition object for Tahokov, Gallery Jaroslava Fragnera, authors Roman Brychta and Pavel Rydlo

And when did the genuine interest in studying architecture at university come?
Once, my high school organized a one-day trip to Prague for an open house at the Faculty of Architecture CTU, where I met my relative, painter Vráťa Ševčík, who was teaching fine arts there. I knocked on his door and from that moment I started drawing and visited him every fortnight for consultations. I started preparing purposefully, which surprised me. They somehow excused me at the Hradec school, even though I ultimately did not receive a recommendation from my homeroom teacher for university studies.

It is worth noting that this was happening during communism when getting into university required not only knowledge and talent but also having "the right class roots" and a recommendation from the committee.
That was the mid-80s because I entered the faculty in 1986. At home in the glassworks, which the communists took and returned to us after the revolution, I was creating still lifes with drapery and honing my drawing in the warehouse with glass in the evenings. Before that, I hadn’t held a pencil properly, so the entrance exams were literally hard-fought, rather than based on natural talent.

Meanwhile, the original building of the Faculty of Architecture offered only gloomy corridors and anonymous rooms inside.
The overall atmosphere at the school in the 80s was terrifying. The great thing was that we all lived in the Strahov dorms and gathered in wide hallways. Both senior and junior classes met here. I remember how guitars were often pulled out in the hallway; Prokop Tomášek, I think, often pulled out his entire setup, and the hallway rang with Jimi Hendrix. With the older boys, we had a gang and played football among the blocks, where there was a large asphalt area.
I don’t know how the intensity of the living together between students is today. From what I know, they mostly live in private accommodations. Back then, there was no other way than dormitories, and it had its charm. The main asset was those wide hallways. When it came to submission, works that had been hand-drawn were made into templates through offset, and various rollouts and collages were used, and everyone would bring it to the hallway, which became one big studio.

Architectural hockey tournament Prague-Brno-Slovakia on May 17, 2008, in Bratislava

Apart from sports, I also perceived you as a person closely connected with the visual arts, which you integrate directly into your buildings. You collaborate closely with graphic designers and other artistic professions.
That is a story from the academy.

So technical school didn't leave a significant mark on you?
I cannot say that. I was influenced at technical school by Martin Roubík.

He brought some wind not only to the school but to the entire Czech environment.
In the 80s, the situation was tragic. At the end of the semester, correct labels and leading titles were checked on the panels, but no one was interested in what was drawn on the canvases afterward. But sometimes they also focused on that, and once they noticed I had drawn red trees and as a backdrop in the perspective of John Lennon with a guitar, and there was already a fire on the roof. So, the pre-November period was not happy.
  
I remember Roubík's short period at CTU after 2000 when his students demolished a window from the studio to the hallway at the school.
It wasn't a period when one would really go to study architecture, but fortunately, the Velvet Revolution soon arrived, which would take a separate chapter. We used to sleep at school and I am very glad I was able to be there. I remember how young guys from the band Lucie came to support us in front of the school. Many unforgettable events took place, and good Czech architects began to arrive at the faculty. Even before that – in the late 80s – Michal Kohout founded the so-called Golden School of Architecture, where Šrámková, Přikryl, Brix, and others worked, which was a type of refresher course because they themselves couldn’t officially teach. In the first wave of 1990, these teachers from the Golden School arrived at the faculty and in a second wave, in 1991, people who emigrated abroad. Among them were, among others, Miroslav Šik and Martin Roubík. Martin Roubík announced a studio and pinned the Library of Alexandria on the notice board. I immediately knew that I had to enroll in his studio. Martin started using the informal form of address with all the students; his assistant was an American Leslie Van Duzer, and all the classes were conducted in English. For me, it was a total change in the approach to architecture education. We designed a corner plot where today the Dancing House stands, and I placed a ship there. While the studio teaching underwent some revisions, the remaining subjects continued to be taught in the same way. I increasingly began to ask myself what I was doing at technical school. Once, I unsuccessfully applied to Emil at the academy. The second time, I missed the deadline for submitting projects. Then I found out that Emil announced an additional entrance exam in September. During the holidays, I was at my uncle's place at Baba on the terrace, redrawing my projects and preparing my portfolio. In September, I took these special entrance exams together with Ján Studený, and we were both accepted. For me, this was a fateful event. Martin Roubík left after some time and returned around 2000. Besides the school studio with the demolished window, he had his architectural studio Pod Juliskou, where we met again after years and discussed. At that time he was working on the successful project of the Grand Egyptian Museum. I believe that alongside Šik, Martin had a big influence on educating new Czech architects; it’s just that this isn’t often talked about. His openness and generosity greatly influenced me as well.

So you ultimately didn't finish at the technical school?
The academy saved me in that regard. Otherwise, I don't know how I would have turned out. My classmates graduated from technical school in 1991, and I started studying at the academy. I was in the second year that Emil accepted.

There could hardly be a greater contrast than studying during communism at CTU and at the post-revolutionary AVU led by Knížák.
To this day, I sign any exchange internships for all students at UMPRUM so they can experience and compare different environments. This indirectly brings us to why I collaborate so much with various artists and professions. Sometimes Emil even scolded me for spending more time in the main building with other artists than in the house with architects. With the Sopkos, whom I was brought by Tomáš Vaněk, I played theater. They actually needed someone to pull ropes for the sets being made. I collaborated with restorers. I went with sculptors to cut stones in a quarry in Hořice. I took figure drawing classes with Otto Plachta. Painters taught me how to prepare canvases. The environment encouraged me to paint. I believe that I will return to painting someday. I feel that longing.

2019 - Football tournament in Brno, Prague (F1) x Brno x Bratislava

You may have brought this team collaboration from a football environment. You are simply not a soloing tennis player.
I have played collective sports my whole life. As little boys, my dad and brother and I played footvolley against adults on vacation in Senc. They always played for champagne, which was chilled next to the court. We tried to pass to Dad according to his commands as accurately as possible for spikes at the net. We won, but we got nothing from the champagne. Positionally, I am more of a playmaker than a finishing player.

In the football team of architects, you were the goalkeeper.
I ended up in goal only now because of my sore back, but historically, I’ve always been somewhere in the middle of the field in a midfield position.

Although you spent a lot of time at the academy among painters and sculptors, you must have been most influenced by Emil Přikryl.
Emil is a genius. I remember how we designed a studio for a visiting professor. He sat next to me and dedicated two hours telling me about modulation, that I must have it figured out and organized in my head so that I know how to put it together afterwards. After this consultation, I lay in bed for a day and a half trying to absorb all of his thoughts. Architecture is like mathematics in the sense of mathematically dissecting the assignment and then compounding it in the form of a house. I spent four years at school, yet I feel I did not absorb all of Emil’s potential as I could have because I spent so much time in the large building. The third year was free. Back then, there was not much travel abroad or transfers to other schools. Initially, I wanted to switch to video, graphic design, and then painting, but before I got around to it, the school year came to an end. I was holed up in the school basement the whole time, playing drums and painting pictures. Only at the end of the year did I realize that I needed to submit something, so I hastily created a competition for a monument in New York. My school projects weren’t groundbreaking. I only really pushed myself to perform well on my diploma project.

1995 - Celtic acropolis at Závisti, diploma thesis of Roman Brychta with professor Emil Přikryl at AVU

Your musical position was unknown to me. You remind me of Honza Žalský, who brought drums to school to unwind from work.
It runs in the family. Dad played the hurdy-gurdy, Mom stopped singing after sixty years, and my brother plays drums in a band. When we were little, my brother and I sang in church. Now we have a choir in Statenice. I know how to read music, but I couldn't play according to the notes. I prefer improvisation. I play everything and nothing, but singing comes naturally to me. I’m interested in working with my voice. One time at the sea, when I was singing, overtones popped up in the water. When I got back, I went to a three-day course with a Swiss guy. In the Mongolian steppe, I found a teacher for overtone singing, who eventually gave us several lessons.

A band called Suchá vazba was formed at the academy, where, besides Žalský, Marcela Steinbachová played bass and Ondřej Císler sang.
We already had bands at the technical school with Prokop Tomášek, Boris Redčenkov, and Peter Lacko, which were called Made in USA and then Hey baby, but we only had two concerts, I believe, with me in them; they might have performed more often after I left. We met in the Strahov dormitories, where we also had a rehearsal room.
The first concert was in the early 90s as part of Beánie at the Tichý hotel in Žižkov, where the "support" band was Visací zámek, but after their concert, the sound engineers disconnected us, so we only played on combos, like Hendrix performed by U2. I then went to the academy, where I founded the band Teta Vilma with sculptors and then Nouzový východ. The original lyrics were recited by Jaromír Švaříček alias Švára. We had our rehearsal studio at the academy in the boiler room, where we rotated with other bands. With the sculptors, we had one concert in Uherské Hradiště at club Mír, where “support” was provided by Psí vojáci. After their concert, there were a few fans left. Our singer was in a similar tuning as Filip Topol.
 
You are one of the co-founders of the F1 football club composed mainly of architects. Was it a way to relax from sedentary work?
Football emerged quite naturally. At first, architects and graphic designers met in Vinohrady and then moved to Ladronka, where F1 was formed. In 2004 we went to Nová Bystřice for our first training camp. We are trying to keep this tradition of training camps every autumn. It’s a great way to unwind but also a place where legends are created. The team is open, making it more interdisciplinary. The club has its founding pillars, but over time it has significantly rejuvenated. Children of some founders now participate too.
The hockey tournament originated as a sequel to common tracksuit winter matches at František, where we met every Sunday evening. Alan Krajčír also attended, who then returned to Bratislava, and we wanted to continue staying in touch. So we thought up architectural hockey tournaments Prague-Brno-Bratislava. I was also interested in finding out what architects in Slovakia/Bratislava are working on because we didn't have much of an overview, even though we knew each other.
The tournaments were best organized in Slovakia. The Slovaks are proud of what they do and do not try to hide anything. On the first day, we played, and on the second day, they showed us the buildings they had just completed. The first tournament took place in Slovakia. Everyone had jerseys made with Korbík holding a hockey stick. I still have him saved. Prague was in red, the Brno team was in white, and the Slovaks in blue. We strengthened our team with younger hockey architects, won the tournament, and did so several more times. Then they also came back to Prague, where we showed them the National Technical Library after the tournament. Petr Burian showed them his building on Petrské náměstí. I'm sure they held the tenth edition, but it hasn't taken place due to the pandemic for two years.

Ecology is not just a trendy word for you. For example, Sluňákov was built before ecology became cool. You and your families regularly return here and gradually expand the area.
The design of Sluňákov stemmed naturally from the surrounding landscape – the park. From the beginning, it was to be a grassy hill with a solar facade. We proposed a double-glazed facade, but we weren't sure if it wouldn't overheat.
Our design for Sluňákov won at the turn of the 20th and 21st century around the same time as the NTK at the turn of the 20th and 21st century when the topic of active double facades was coming. Still, it soon became clear that it didn’t have much effect.
So at NTK, we reevaluated the original active facade together with Honza Žemlička. At that time, we drew inspiration from Germany, where heated warm air from the double southern facade was pushed by fans to the northern facade, creating a thermal cushion. Eventually, we abandoned this complex concept and returned to natural ventilation.
The topic of ecology has touched us like everyone else, but we do not like the current subsidy system, which monitors compliance with the passive standard requirements, but does not examine what material was used and how recyclable it is. Thirty centimeters of polystyrene must be made from something, and then it ages and the ecological disposal of it becomes an issue. Sustainability is not just about materials and technologies in the building itself, but about the entire surrounding environment and its operation using common sense. If I have a smart house full of complex technologies and operate it poorly, it does not bring any benefits.

You have also contributed other buildings to Sluňákov.
After the house came the next phase of the adjacent park, where individual artists contributed, and Projektil oversaw it all. Zdeněk Sendler contributed a garden concept to the area.

2007 - Center for Ecological Education Sluňákov, Projektil architects, photo: Petr Šmídek

You regularly return there.
Now my wife went there for the conference EDO (Ecological Days Olomouc), which Michal Bartoš has been organizing at Sluňákov for years. We have close ties. We have already concluded two canoeing expeditions on the Morava River with our children there. I was the first to sleep at Sluňákov. I was there with my wife Zuzka and her colleague Jana, who were finishing the graphic orientation system in the house. I worked and slept well there, so I had a good feeling.

You tested the building on your own.
The main theme of my work is the relationship between the house and the place. I am interested in what the house does to the place, to what extent it occupies it, or offers it for further use. One can walk through Hradec's and Dejvice libraries. At Sluňákov, I can climb onto the roof without feeling like I’m standing on the house. Hradec's ČSOB, where the officials have already moved in, is the first bank that the public can freely walk through and find themselves in the heart of the building. It's great that we managed to find understanding with the investor and push this idea through.

Regarding your pedagogical work at UMPRUM. What topics do you choose and how does your teaching proceed?
At school, we deal with open topics combined with specific assignments. At UMPRUM, there are vertical master studios, and what each studio focuses on is at the discretion of the studio leadership. We have a motto that architecture is primarily about caring for the place where we live, and the topics that arise mainly correspond to current events in society or the place where we live. For example, in 2015 we assigned the topic Exodus. After the last elections to the European Parliament, where limiting movement and closing borders resonated with populist parties, the topic was Borders. In the winter semester, we assigned the topic Hradec Králové – Litomyšl D35. We collaborate with students from other fields. We approached sociology students and together set out for Litomyšl and Hradec Králové for a sociological survey. A trio of students, where for every two architects there was one sociologist, asked people about the problem of traffic flow through the city and tasked them with creating a mental map of the town.

2021 - UMPRUM A4, traditional Mikulášsky ping-pong tournament

What do you consider the most important? Do you have comparisons with other schools?
When creating public space, you should first investigate as much as possible about the environment. In quantitative sociological studies, you only send anonymous questionnaires, where only someone signs up, but directly at the site, you meet people who actually use the place and talk to them for five or ten minutes. It should be important not only for architects but also for the city as an investor to ask those who use the place. When I finish my design, I then check whether important moments obtained from sociologists have not disappeared during the process. In the end, form is not so important; it can change variously, but the required or experienced content of function must not be lost. One cannot disrupt existing things without replacement. Thus, I communicate and discuss the design again with sociologists.

Architects might overlook some details.
Architects tend to clean things up too much. Soft details may not play the most important role, but they are significant.

Workshop Umprum A4 with Socionauts in the winter semester 2021.

Let's break down individual projects. Emil Přikryl compared the shape of NTK to Zeithamml’s sculptures on the border of a square and a circle. This shape subconsciously appeals to everyone.
When designing, I work a lot with the place. I spend plenty of time on it, feeling it out, and walking around. This applies even to places I don't know. It's nothing special. Most people do it this way. I think the shape arose from the knowledge of the place and then intuitively sketching with a pencil on paper.

But architects can still find themselves proposing a house for a plot they have not personally visited.
I can't imagine that in practice. I don’t do this even with students, but we did it during the pandemic at the school. We said that if we can’t go anywhere, we’ll design for the other side of the world. We found international student competitions and worked with the place based on Google Maps. I personally work with intuition. I don't always manage to justify everything. It’s like with art. To explain it makes no sense. You can explain some impulse, but you can’t describe why you paint it this way.

2000 - NTK - competitive proposal, AK Architekti, photo: Pavel Štecha

I also prefer first impressions during gallery visits.
That's intuition, and then comes the search. In our studio, everyone sketches. I also require this at school, but progress cannot be halted. I would be interested to know the percentage of sketching and searching on computers among today's students and young architects.

What was your first experience with a computer?
I still drew my diploma thesis by hand, but I was already using collages. On my diploma, I had a sculptural detail on a cylindrical surface, which was difficult to deliver. Miro Kurčík modeled that cylinder with a relief of a Celt's head, which was found at Závisti, on the computer and printed it on a dot-matrix printer. I then collaged it into 0.25 mm pen-drawn facades and xeroxed them.

2008 - Projektil Exhibition, Gallery Jaroslava Fragnera

What was your diploma thesis about?
Unfortunately, from my perspective, it's a sad topical subject, the Celtic acropolis at Závisti. I believe a lookout tower should not be built there, and the colorful composition reminiscent of acropolis constructions is, for me, too creative an approach to solving this sacred pagan site. Jakub Potůček discussed this issue on a short radio program (contribution Self-serving Creations of Irresponsible Architects: Destructive Designs That Decimate the Landscape for the program Mozaika on Czech Radio Vltava – editorial note). It’s a large fortified site on two hills above Zbraslav. The characteristic "flattened" hill of the acropolis can be seen even from Letná. In the 1950s and 60s, it was excavated by Dr. Drda, with whom I discussed the then still unfilled excavations.
My diploma thesis addressed the site of the acropolis – that is, the excavations – and then I additionally designed a Museum of Celtic Culture in Bohemia, which is still missing in our country. I returned the excavation site back to the original form of a meadow with a subtle geometric reminder of the objects, whose foundations are buried underground. I marked the floor plans with strong glass walls and buried them. So on the meadow, you could discover the geometry of the buildings. They did not dominate the natural site. At the location where archaeologists now have objects for the excavation archive, I designed a glass circular Museum of Celtic Culture with the aforementioned relief, which was supplemented with a long stone object serving as a research laboratory with archives.

So even in your diploma, you had a circular glass facade. NTK is something between a square and a circle.
As I mentioned, it was about transferring the initial sketch on the site into exact geometry. I knew from the beginning that it had to be a compact central object. We then discarded part of the building program by pushing the required parking into a separate building. At one point, I hesitated whether it was a good concept. Then during a visit to Miloš Fekar, while walking to the Morava River, Soňa Ryndová called me and said, "Make sure you don’t change anything." She probably saw the initial designs from Václav Králíček, and she got the impression that it was it. This was also an interesting fateful moment.

2010 - Astronomy exhibition, National Technical Museum, Projektil architects, photo: Andrea Thiel Lhotáková

The winning proposal consisted of two objects.
Yet both firmly adhered to the original block concept of Antonín Engel. I think it was this urban composition that was positively evaluated in the competition. The objects closed off the public park space between them. We were convinced that the library did not need cars in the campus and that it would be more effective, just as they did in Western Europe, to design a car park for the whole campus within the plot. People should have walked to the library. After a four-year hiatus in seeking finance, the project for the library continued. At that time, Prague 6 and ČVUT opposed the parking structure, saying a building with a different functional use should stand in its place. So, we re-calculated the originally required 450 parking spaces to 317 spaces with transport pro Toníček Žižkovský and began thinking about how to place the parking under the library. A square seemed ideal, but how to link the upper construction in the shape of a superellipse to it? We didn't want the underground part to stick out. In the end, we managed to solve the layout in the form of a ring of parking around a centrally positioned tube of library facilities and a storage area. In the study, and perhaps also in DUR – I don’t remember exactly – we sketched a rectangle for possible future construction within the regulation of the competition parking lot.

The idea of engaging artists into the design was from the start, or did it come up later during realization, as in the case of the colored floors?
When the interior began to be addressed, we formed a wider team, inviting designers, graphic artists, and artists. I drew upon personal contacts. We reached out to Radim Babák and Ondřej Tobola from the hipposdesign studio, Petr Babák and his Laboratory, and the group PAS – Production of Contemporary Activities, which includes Tomáš Vaněk, Vítek Havránek, and Jirka Skála. During our joint meetings, we discussed various approaches to solving the technical library, which we designed in raw visual materials, meaning revealed in both material and technological aspects. We left a maximum of the distribution visible. It was thus about how the interior in all its fields should connect to this link. There was a big debate about the floors. We thought about whether it would be white, dark, or gray. We knew the ground floor had to be publicly accessible. From Germany, we managed to bring a completely ordinary technology but used for the first time in our country, of seamless poured bituterrazzo. In the upper floors, it was ultimately a coincidence that decided. One day, at our joint interdisciplinary meeting, Kateřina Horáková brought a floor plan from the structural engineer, and everyone agreed that we had to use it. Mainly the designers grabbed it as a clear solution in the overall building’s concept. We mutually supported each other in the team throughout the process.

2013 - Reconstruction of a boiler room in Lochovice into a company headquarters, Projektil architects, photo: Andrea Thiel Lhotáková

Are you thinking of NTK director Martin Svoboda too?
Mr. Director played an undeniably important role in supporting the whole project, which he had chosen during the competition as well. I recall that the option of colored floors fell off the table several times, but I always picked it up and advocated it further. However, the proposed colors were not from a standard color sample. Once I made a turn with the flooring supplier to Freiburg, Germany, where they eventually mixed the precise shades for us. I still have the samples with numbers saved. Now we are working on a redesign, and maybe those samples will come in handy.

Is it for the tenth anniversary?
I don't think so, but after ten years of operation, the library realized that it didn’t need so many shelves in the open selection.

With the advent of digitization, has the usage changed?
They have new requirements for new services and would like to increase the number of study places. We met with the original team, and a month ago we submitted a study.

2014 - Vida Science Centre Brno, Projektil architects, photo: Andrea Thiel Lhotáková

How did you come to collaborate with Petr Babák, but mainly with the Romanian visual artist Dan Perjovschi ? Was art to be part of the project from the beginning?
As I already mentioned, Tomáš Vaněk, Vít Havránek, and Jirka Skála sat at the same table at that time; they were thinking of artistic inputs for the building. We submitted an interior study that had seven points. One of them was also a film vision. We wanted to invite Jan Němec or Lars von Trier to film in the NTK, and the building would thus step outside its physical environment. Others included network things with Katka Šedá. In the newsroom, there would be television news channels that were not commonly available at that time, and then a video window where a video art loop would play. The main theme was the central piece of artwork. The guys pulled out three names: Carsten Nicolai, Carsten Höller, and Dan Perjovschi. We approached them when the shell of the building was already completed and invited them to come see it. The artistic installations were financed through the developer, which made it complicated. Smaller projects fell off, but the central artwork remained. Assistants came from Nicolai and Höller, but Dan Perjovschi showed up in person. He walked around the construction and was fascinated by how the bricklayers painted notes on the walls. They all sent us their proposals. A commission met. Carsten Höller proposed slides in the atrium, which he had installed at Tate Modern at that time, which was entirely financially out of our reach. Carsten Nicolai, who also partially creates music, placed an object in the ground floor called Prague Twins, which reacted to people's movements with sound. Dan Perjovschi decided to draw on the building, but his intervention was reduced only to the atrium. In the end, it turned out that it suited the library best. Some architects said we let them draw on beautiful concrete. During the realization of the drawings, it was funny to hear comments from workers in the sense that even their child could draw it... Working with Dan was great. He’s of a similar blood type to me or Tomáš Vaněk. After four years, I attended a lecture of his at Transit, where he showed the audience the work in NTK as his only permanent exhibition. He works similarly, for instance, at MoMA, where he draws on the whole gallery, but once done, everything gets erased. I believe he is still enthusiastic about the entire event at NTK and we are happy to meet.

NTK was the first major contract for Projektil. How did they view you on the construction site as young emerging architects overseeing the construction worth billions?
When we won, I was 33 years old. I was the oldest among the guys. But the actual design did not start until four years later, and construction began when I was 39. I left a meeting just once with a slam of the door. We had strong support from the investor. Director Martin Svoboda did not want any junk in the interior; he wanted proper things that wouldn’t have to be thrown away in a year or two. This was evident in the example of the chairs, which have served for fifteen years.

2014 - Museum of Czech Coachbuilding in Vysoké Mýto, Projektil architects

With Maarten Van Severena, you can’t go wrong either.
Besides, when a chair falls, it doesn't make noise because it's soft.

In addition to using quality serial furniture from Vitra, you also designed your own hexagonal furniture.
That was done by the guys Radim (Babák) and Ondřej (Tobola) from the hipposdesign studio. We figured NTK needed something of its own too. The library collections from CTU and VŠCHT went to NTK, and at one meeting, the vice-presidents of these institutions met. I presented to them the complete interior design to show how the internal structure of the house would work. The then VŠCHT (Jan) Staněk (from the Institute of Chemistry of Natural Substances) caught me after the presentation and shared his enthusiasm for the shapes of the proposed seating (hexagons), which reminded him of chemical formulas, which the guys did without knowing.
The expressive concept of the building and the interior was then linked by Petr Babák with external dimensions and technical labels inside. He layered, added, and discovered where things happened. Seemingly insignificant data, but they play a significant role in the overall concept.

2015 - CEFRES Library on Florenc in Prague, Projektil architects, photo: Andrea Thiel Lhotáková

You have become experts in libraries. You managed to win another competition for Hradec Králové, where the mass of the library is even bolder.
In 2002 we founded Projektil. We reconstructed the pub Na Vyhlídce in Krnov, but otherwise, we had no other commissions, so we began competing. Within two years, we participated in competitions for Třída Míru in Pardubice, the library in Hradec, and the ecological center Sluňákov. In Pardubice, we ended up second, but we won Hradec and Sluňákov, and both projects began to be designed. Thanks to that, Projektil was able to function. I still maintain that all public competitions should be open. It is one of the key ways for young architects to start their offices. Even if they win too large a commission, they can connect with some experienced office and carry on. As we did in Hradec, where we partnered with Deltaplan, from whom I learned a lot.

2018 - Hall for UMPRUM and Dance Conservatory

You collaborated with Helika on NTK.
This allows you to enter the system of larger contracts, which is quite different from building family houses. The story of NTK is a bit complicated. We spent four years in euphoria. We traveled around Europe looking at similar examples of constructions and companies producing materials we wanted to use for the building. Then, nothing happened for a long time. Václav (Králíček) was no longer part of the team. Funding was found, but a competition had to be announced for the designer. I wanted to go with Deltaplan based on my experiences from Hradec. Together with Pavel Štěpán, we prepared the proposal until 4 in the morning; however, Helika also submitted and won. After many acrobatics, we agreed with them and then designed together.

The cross layout and slit windows of the Hradec library are more radical than the polished pebble of NTK.
Both competitions ended up with the juries awarding the first prize and then third places. Looking back, both proposals were bold, different from the others. One must appreciate the courage of the jurors for deciding to go for something bold and different.

Architects often look at who sits on the jury and bet on the sure thing to please their taste.
Yes. I also decide to participate in competitions based on the quality of the jury and the quality of the assignment.

2002 - Library and Information Center in Hradec Králové, competition sketch: Roman Brychta

When clearing new paths, one finds unconventional solutions like the round windows in Hradec.
Within a system reflecting the spatial use of the interior, sometimes some windows are simply omitted, introducing a certain irregularity into the project, disrupting the system. Where a railing gets in the way, we skipped the window or where shelves are in storage, windows are not needed. It’s not a hidden code. The radical plan in the shape of an X stemmed from the analysis of the place. It was a momentary idea – a reaction to the context. Then I also found out that the original building regulations for this site by Gočár were also at an angle to Hradecká street. The secondary school opposite is more of a solitary in his plan. Another challenge was to create a compositionally compact object in a concrete sandwich. It was then the largest building made of visual monolith in our country. We maintained the sandwich throughout the project and waited to see who would be the contractor. Východočeská stavební won; at the first meeting, my childhood classmate Miloš Filipi surfaced as the main betonier, and he took it as a challenge. Previously, he had worked a lot in Germany and had a positive relationship to the materials. He created several trial walls and poured potentially the most complicated detail, and until he managed to do it and had the technology figured out completely, he didn’t go into actual construction, which back then wasn't the standard in our country; but here, one could also feel the German school and the desire to do the job well.

2012 - From the Life of People and Houses, exhibition at the House of Art in České Budějovice

In 2011, you had an exhibition at Michal Škoda in České Budějovice, where you invited Adam Gebrian as the curator. The exhibition took place a few months after Instagram emerged in the US, and nobody knew it back then in our country. You invited people to send pictures of your buildings, and with them, you wallpapered the entire gallery. So everyone really had the opportunity to exhibit.
For me personally, the exhibition of our work is another project. I don't believe that living architects should only exhibit what they drew, built, but should also comment on something. Before the exhibition, there was a call for people to send us photos via email, from which we then created a book and wallpapered part of the gallery. In another room, a film Memory about NTK was played. In the entrance room, there were small studies about Budějovice. Ondřej Hofmeister focused on transportation and presented in pies how much space is occupied by transportation and how much it ideally needs. Adam Halíř tracked the movement of people in the city. Petr Lešek visually marked the area in the park that belongs to one resident of the city. I think it was 21 m², and we discussed that if someone took away a living room, they would immediately complain, but if 21 m² of park disappears, no resident shows up at the council. I created a video focusing on cultural space. We put together the questions with Vítem Havránkem and asked about what all constitutes cultural space, even non-physical ones, and had a video filmed with a survey. We also asked about the overall identity of the city. So, a total of four projects were presented at the Budějovice exhibition. It wasn’t just about exhibiting photos of our buildings.

Was the Budějovice exhibition the first solo exhibition of Projektil?
No, we had already exhibited at Frágnerka, but there was nothing there. Just a black space and sound from NTK, and then a short video of the three buildings we completed.

Was that still under Soňa Ryndová?
No, Frágnerka was already managed by Dan Merta.

2017 - Projektil 33, DOX, Prague

The last big exhibition of Projektil took place at the turn of 2017/18 in DOX.
With the exhibition Projektil33, Jana Kostelecká helped us tremendously. We had the ambition to send the exhibition out into the world, but then the coronavirus came, and it all came to a standstill. So we returned the exhibits to the artists or bought some ourselves.

So there was a premiere, but the encore did not continue?
Tremendous work hides behind it. No gallery was overseeing that. First, we had to find a curator who could help us with that ambition. Michal Nanora enjoyed it a lot in the end, I think. Besides the exhibition, I decided to publish a book. And that was another big undertaking. Meeting gradually with all the artists for interviews and bringing the texts together. We prepared the book for a year and a half, but I really enjoy making books. On the occasion of the ten years of NTK, I persuaded the director that a second volume full of texts should be created because the first volume was hastily published for the opening of the building and was mostly pictorial. I have long collaborated on books with Petr Babák. Together with PhD students at UMPRUM, we started creating book outputs of semester works. They come in an A4 manual, which was developed by Matěj Hanauer as part of the klausur at Petr Babák. Most recently, we published a book of semester works called Prototyp together with Martin Jančok.

2021 - Reconstruction of brewery terraces in Vimperk, collaboration with landscape architects Steiner and Malíková

Did UMPRUM collaborate with VŠVU?
No, he came to UMPRUM at my invitation. I have always wanted to collaborate with someone from Slovakia, which I succeeded in when my assistant Ondřej Busta left in 2019. We hurriedly didn’t manage to choose a new assistant, so the school allowed me to invite Martin for the winter semester. Generally, I have liked the Slovak architectural scene since judging CE ZA AR, where, coincidentally, Martin won the first year of my service on the jury, and a year later we traveled around Slovakia's nominated realizations as judges. In CE ZA AR, there is a rule that the winner of the competition is then a member of the jury the following year. We clicked back then, so leading a studio together clicked, and we exhibited the resulting Prototyp projects in both Prague and Bratislava.

Now you have new assistants at UMPRUM Markéta Mráčková and Barbora Šimonová.
For two years now. I am very glad that they are with me. They have infused a lot of energy into me. I am different, and they are different from each other, but it creates an interesting harmony.

2021 - HHQ regional headquarters of ČSOB in Hradec Králové, Projektil architects in collaboration with Roman Brychta architects

The latest major realization is the ČSOB headquarters in Hradec Králové. Another strong form by the water stemming from the flow of people.
We completed the bank last September. It was a prompted two-round competition. Coincidentally, just like at the library, it was a plot by the river and a bridge. I didn’t even know there was such a free plot in Hradec. There was another project already started, but the company went bankrupt, the parcel was released again, and the bank happily chose it for its regional headquarters.

Did you run around the river here when you were younger?
Not around there. I finished high school in 1986. At that time, Aldis was being built next door.

That's the tin house across the street?
No, Aldis is the congress center closer to the center. The great building across the street is the telephone exchange from the late 70s by the team of Malátek, Eisenreich, Loos, and Aulický. The building now belongs to Cetin. For the cooperation on the Hradec bank, I also invited Vítem Havránka and Lukáš Kijonka. We walked along the waterfront together. They were both seeing the place for the first time and were blown away by the waterfront and that "tin" red building. We discussed its current significance and imagined it could make a great kunsthalle.

2021 - Chýně Primary Community School - Hostivice

You can also find a similar principle of publicly passable parterre here as in NTK.
Thanks to shifting the overall mass, we managed to bring the center of the house closer to public entrance spaces, and then it was just a step to let people walk freely through. We kept this intention from the beginning. Given what kind of infill buildings arose here in the past, I consider this place to have great potential for the city. The whole area should be transformed. The bank asked us for our opinion, and we drew the city because in the future, the transit transport will move to D35, traffic on the city circle will calm down, and the space should become an urban boulevard. In the future, there should be no peripheral buildings like gas stations and supermarkets. They should be moved further to D11, and a city should grow in their place since we are located 10-15 minutes walking distance from the center. That is why the house is passable from the river towards the city circuit, where more buildings should grow, and the city should continue along the boulevard.

So besides ČSOB headquarters, you designed the whole surroundings?
Although the neighboring plots no longer belong to the bank, the bank wanted to know our opinion on the overall urbanism in the second round of the competition. They want to know the potential of the place themselves. This opinion of ours was also submitted to the city, and I believe they are discussing the transformation of this place at the office.

2021 - Horoměřice Primary School

This project marked the end of your collaboration with Projektil and opened a new phase of independent study.
Yes, we completed this project together after my departure. Projektil still had projects left that I led in competitions and at the beginning before I intensely devoted myself to the Hradec bank, such as the swimming pool in Písek and apartment buildings as part of the Smíchov City project. In November, a not-so-glorious exhibition called Our Germans was opened in Ústí nad Labem. We had been preparing it for ten years, and it opened unfinished in the end. In 2012, we won a relatively significant competition. It was pleasing work with the authors' team. The then director of Collegium Bohemicum Blanka Mouralová, who had been preparing the exhibition for a long time and decided to organize an open architectural competition, brought to the team curator and art historian Milena Bartlová (a colleague prof. at UMPRUM) and historian Jan Šícha. It was a large exhibition with a political story/overlaps/messaging. Then the project stood still for several years due to funding. Then there was a change in leadership and a severance of the authors' team from the project, which I considered very non-standard, but in our environment, probably nothing surprising. And it turned out as it turned out.

Your professional path is marked by major projects, of which there are only a certain number on the Czech market.
How is your office managing to secure new contracts after your independence?
Projektil is an established brand, and I am trying to build a new one. I left in the middle of 2020. We continued to finish the bank for another year, which kept us quite busy in my office. Besides, we did a few unsuccessful and one successful competition. I am dedicated to the same things that I was at Projektil. A broad spectrum of assignments, focusing on the public sector and space. And I have started to enjoy small things too.

2022 - Reconstruction of Náměstí Svobody in Kladno, collaboration with landscape architects Steiner and Malíková

How has COVID-19 impacted everything? Professionally and personally?
The first lockdown at school was tough. It was hard to get used to online teaching. Nobody knew how to do it. Everyone sat home alone. We were interrupting each other. We didn’t know how to use the “vote hand.” The assignment was not prepared for online teaching. During the second autumn lockdown, we met with Bára and Markéta at the school so that at least the three of us could be together; we could immediately know each other’s reactions and consult and comment outside the microphone. Thus, consultations proceeded more efficiently. We decided to do group projects instead of individual ones. Consulting twenty projects online is deadly. In the end, it began working for us and pushed me personally ahead. Now the school is full of students again; the spirit has returned, the walls are covered, and you can see the process. There are four of us in the office, so we continued to meet during the pandemic; only when someone was in quarantine, they joined remotely.

Did any projects need to be stopped?
The Hradec bank was amazing; that went almost exactly according to schedule. The exhibition in Ústí dragged on for a year, and is still not finished. Rather than some external influences, it reflects the client’s capabilities.