Tag: modernist architecture

View of the Bedřich Feuerstein exhibition

Bedřich Feuerstein, Architect: Prague – Paris – Tokyo: Exhibition review

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The history of architecture is littered with designers who, for various reasons, have disappeared from the record or have remained on the margins. One of the unfortunate architects to have suffered this fate was Bedřich Feuerstein (1892–1936), who is known primarily for the crematorium he designed in Nymburk. The exhibition of his work now at the Technical Museum in Prague is a welcome and long overdue event. The curator, Helena Čapková, has already published a book on Feuerstein’s work, and this exhibition is a crystallisation as well as a development of her earlier research on him.[1]

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Lost In Czech Modern Architecture: Exhibition review

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Prague Castle has become a distinctive symbol of the way that the built environment can be appropriated by political power. In such a prominent setting, linked with a long tradition of feudal sovereigns and presidents, any architectural exhibition is therefore a notable affair. The current exhibition of Czech Architecture from Art Nouveau to Today (the Czech title is slightly different: Česká moderní architektura od secese dnešku) installed in the old Riding School of Prague Castle attempts to tell one general story, but in so doing it seems to reveal more than the curators, in fact, intended.

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Artwork of the Month, May 2021: The Church of St. Anthony of Padua by Gyula Rimanóczy (1931–34)

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In the western suburbs of the 2nd district of Budapest, on Pasaréti Square, is one of the more striking examples of interwar modernist architecture in Hungary: the Franciscan Church of St. Anthony of Padua. The innovative nature of the design is apparent if we compare it with other churches built in Hungary shortly before, such as the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Győr of 1929, or the Church of St. Emeric in Balatonalmádi (1930). We can also gain a sense of the striking addition it made to the cityscape when we view it in its environs, a low-density neighbourhood of villas. It is commonly regarded as one of the most important churches built in interwar Hungary, and as evidence of the embrace by the Hungarian Catholic church of modernity. Consecrated in October 1934, it might have been the first example of functionalist church architecture in Hungary, had it not been for the tumultuous process of its approval that delayed its completion. As a result, the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Bertalan (1901–1971) and Aladár Árkay (1868–1932) is generally held to have that distinction.

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