Josef Karásek

After graduating from secondary school in Liberec, Josef Karásek attended the German technical university in Prague, and in 1885 he began working for the Moravian governor’s office in Brno – initially as an adjunct building officer, then as chief engineer of the construction department. In the first decade of the 20th century, he was also an associate professor at the Imperial and Royal Czech Technical University in Brno, and after Czechoslovak independence he worked as an advisor for the Ministry of Public Works. As during his time at the Moravian governor’s office, in his role as ministerial advisor he sat on the jury for several architecture competitions. In 1919, for example, he served as president of the jury for a competition relating to the housing construction in Prague’s Ořechovka neighbourhood. As a building officer at Moravian governor’s office, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries he designed several schools and other public buildings in the historicist style, among them a grammar school in Jihlava and a school in Kroměříž. He also worked as a civil engineer on many other building projects, including Olomouc Regional (today District) Court. His most important building, designed in collaboration with Theodor Macharáček, is the monumental Neo-Classical Provincial Institute for the Blind in Brno.

Tereza Štěpánová

Architect
Josef Karásek

Sources
https://jam.jihlava.cz/architekt/10-josef-karasek