Shortly after his arrival in Brno as außerordentlicher Professor at the German Technical University, the Viennese architect Ferdinand Hrach was commissioned to enlarge the institution’s original building on Komenského náměstí. He increased the height of Ignaz Latzel’s 1860 structure by one floor, added a courtyard wing and subsequently also built a new building for the Chemistry Institute. However, even these new additions quickly proved insufficient. Due to the overall growth of the technical sciences, the establishment of an electrical engineering department and the creation of new specializations and departments, the number of prospective students continued to increase. This persistent interest in studying at the university placed increasing pressure on lecture halls and on the various departments’ workshops and equipment.
In 1902, only three years after the completion of the aforementioned expansion, the university acquired land for a new building. The triangular plot was located on Brno’s prestigious ring road close to the school’s existing buildings. Due to the presence of an older building on the site, however, combined with a delay in issuing a building permit and other hold-ups associated with the scale and costs of construction, work did not start until the end of May 1907.
In his plans for the project, Hrach designed a four-storey building conceived as a standalone block that would make maximum use of the available plot. Josef Nebehosteny served as construction manager and Josef Matzenauer as chief engineer, but Hrach played a role in managing the construction work as well. Parts of the building could already be used after just one year of construction; it was completed and officially opened in the autumn of 1910.
The plans envisaged the creation of lecture halls larger than those in the original buildings; the establishment of a ceremonial hall with a vestibule; rooms for various departments; chemistry, electrical engineering, civil engineering and architecture laboratories and workshops; and the creation of functional connections between related disciplines. There were even separate spaces for a photography studio and weather station.
The main entrance on the ground floor opened onto a vestibule with access to the private apartments of the building’s caretakers and a main staircase leading to the upper floors. The individual rooms were reached along a corridor running around the central courtyard. Official spaces such as a reception room, meeting room and ceremonial hall were located on the second floor. A large auditorium was situated in the bevelled corner of the building where Joštova and Marešova Streets meet. Like the ceremonial hall, it was two storeys in height.
The building’s exterior is shaped into a distinctive relief through the use of large window areas, tall avant-corps, pilaster strips and a massive projecting cornice. The ornamental and figural decoration and all other decorative details reflect the building’s function. In designing the facades, Hrach focused on the building’s character, on quality and solidity without undue extravagance. In terms of style and form, he opted for a strict Neo-Renaissance approach. The building’s dominant figural elements are mascarons with evident portrait features above the ground-floor windows and three allegorical female sculptures representing technical fields – engineering, architecture and chemistry – in niches on the eastern elevation. The reliefs of the owl of Athena with wreaths of oak leaves refer to the university as a place of learning and to German national symbolism and represent an attempt at avoiding the kinds of motifs found on apartment buildings.
A comparison of the three neighbouring educational buildings designed and completed by Ferdinand Hrach over the years reveals his slow move towards simpler facades and towards reflecting the building’s structure, meaning its core, on the exterior. This observation is further supported by Hrach’s continued emphasis on the interconnection of a building’s interior and exterior designs. With this in mind, the new building of the German Technical University in Brno can be included among those buildings that herald the beginnings of modern architectural expression.
This modern character has been preserved on the facades to this day, although the courtyard was covered in a ceiling with skylights and several changes were made to the building’s layout as part of a large-scale renovation project in 2005. The building currently houses Masaryk University’s Faculty of Social Studies.
Šárka Svobodová
