The Exhibition Is Held under the Auspices of the Minister of Culture Jiří Besser
Alongside contemporary Czech and foreign architecture Jaroslav Fragner Gallery regularly showcases important domestic figures. This exhibition on Věra and Vladimír Machonin was organised for several reasons. The publishing and architectural activity of this couple, both of them architects, was limited from the start of the 1970s, and thus their works, such as Kotva Department Store, the House of Apartment Culture, and Thermal Spa Hotel, are paradoxically not too well known.

Another reason is the generally limited familiarity with architecture from the 1960s and 1970s. While authors in the fields of fine art, literature, film, theatre and music are generally well known, the discussion on architecture is still in its early stages. Attention has usually focused just on SIAL in Liberec, while other developments in the field of architecture have remained a matter of interest more for experts than the general public. This exhibition is intended to be another step in uncovering our own, relatively recent history. It also demonstrates that the sweeping association of all architecture from the 1970s a priori with politics is unjustified and derives from a lack of knowledge. Moreover, often these are buildings of high artistic value and quality and are structurally and aesthetically innovative.

The exhibition of the work of Věra Machoninová (*1928) and Vladimír Machonin (1920–1990), architects and spouses, is centred mainly on their best-known works and projects from the 1960s and 1970s: Kotva Department Store, the House of Apartment Culture and the master plan for Budějovické Square, Thermal Spa Hotel in Karlovy Vary, and the building of the Czechoslovak Embassy in Berlin. The exhibition presents originals and reproductions of period and contemporary photographs, plans, and drawings, there is a screening prepared for visitors, and the model from the competition for the spa grounds in Karlovy Vary and the model for Kotva are both on show. Visitors to the exhibition will also have an opportunity to learn about the architects' design work. The armchairs and chairs from the Embassy of the Czech Republic and Thermal are on exhibit at the gallery, along with the last surviving chairs from the House of Apartment Culture. There are also four wooden relief panels on show from the House of Apartment Culture that were originally part of the external cladding of the cinema hall.
The idea behind the exhibition is to highlight a complex approach to architecture, encompassing everything from innovative takes on technology and materials, the linking of exteriors to interiors and reflecting them in the details, original furniture designs, and working with artists. The Czech-English exhibition catalogue contains over 200 reproductions, an introductory essay on the Machonins' works, an interview with Věra Machoninová, a list of their works, and a bibliography. The publication also contains additional projects and works not covered in the exhibition.
Klára Pučerová, Pavel Směták, curators

The Machonins were part of the strong generation that began creating at the time of the waning historicism of Socialist Realism, and which from the mid 1950s was establishing intermittent contact with world events. It was the generation of architects which first acquired a solid professional background in its perfect command of the traditions of domestic building craft and, building on this, began to implement in its own work the artistic and engineering aspects of architecture. The search for a new architectural expression and for new construction and material approaches was symptomatic of this generation. A generation of strong engineer-architects.
Radomíra Sedláková, co-curator

...A new generation of architects made their arrival known, architects who had studied after the war and had then gone to work at planning institutes where they had to give in to the ‘methods of Socialist Realism’, some with the enthusiasm and theoretic fervour of young Komsomol boys, others however under pressure. Nevertheless, that was the experience they started out from. They reacted then all the more eagerly in the late 1950s to new outside influences, to the Brutalist architecture of Le Corbusier’s late works, to Niemeyer and his elegant sculptural morphology, to Aalta, the Japanese Metabolists and Kenzo Tange, Kahn, to the British Archigram and the Neobrutalist Smithsons, to Scandinavian empiricism, Lever House, the vertical structure with the flat substructure, to Mies and his discovery of the beauty of steel structures, to Saarinen, Rudolph, and more. The quick pace at which Western standards were absorbed is demonstrated by the winning entry in the international competition to design the university in Dublin in 1964, which was a project created by Prager, Albrecht, Kadeřábek, Machonin, and Machoninová....a strong aesthetic influence came from Corbusier’s and British Brutalist architecture, examples of which in this country are the buildings of the Thermal Hotel in Karlovy Vary, the Home Living Centre, the Kotva Department Store (the Machonins), or the Parliament building (Prager, Albrecht, Kadeřábek) and the Intercontinental Hotel in Prague (Filsak, Bubeníček).
Pavel Halík

In the early 2000s, the Czech Republic saw the emergence of several structures that make direct references to international works, which can be interpreted as an expression of the ‘free choice of ideal’,1 but with the Machonins we find such references more in individual elements or methods used, often inventively and harmoniously combined. Primarily their combinations involve two styles recognised even by contemporary critics in this country at the time they were applied: one is sculptural architecture, which involves the moulding of concrete, and light, constructive architecture using steel supports and cladding...How Věra and Vladimír Machonin deployed the Modernist principle is most apparent in their inventive treatment of space, wherein they never however strayed far from the ideal of openness and the clarity of space, which in the 1960s was often abandoned in favour of more complex, labyrinthine, or ‘polyvalent’ spaces... the hexagonal structure of Kotva Department Store derives from an attempt to as effectively as possible fit the massive floor space into a space surrounded by historical buildings, the aim of the architects was to create an open vista across the floor right through the full depth of the building.
Lukáš Beran

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition Věra & Vladimír Machonin 60´/ 70´ at Galerie Jaroslava Fragnera in Prague (22. 12. 2010 – 30. 01. 2011). The publication presents the major works and projects development by these two married architects. Alongside the well-known Kotva Department Store, the House of Apartment Culture, or the Thermal Spa Hotel in Karlovy Vary, there the less well-known Embassy of the Czech Republic in Berlin (‘a spaceship in the centre of a pulsating city’ – Bild), the Machonins’ own home, or the villa they created for Otomar Krejča. Selected projects include the master plan for Budějovické Square, the competition for the addition to the Old Town Hall, the building of the Federal Assembly, or the hotel in Prague-Břevnov.
The introductory texts provide readers with an overview of the Machonins’ works and describe the situation in architecture and society in the 1960s and 1970s, and also look at the original interiors and furniture architecture the couple created (e.g. the wing-chair well-known from the Karlovy Vary Film Festival). The publication contains profiles of individual projects and the texts on completed works are moreover accompanied by numerous period and contemporary photographs.
220x260 mm, 128 pages, 12 eur ISBN 978-80-904484-1-4