In 1886, the Imperial and Royal Czech State Technical School was founded in Brno at what today is Grohova Street 4. In 1887–1889, a new headquarters was built at Gorkého Street 7, a fact commemorated by a plaque on the building. Nevertheless, the school quickly outgrew this new building, and so, ten years later, a new and elaborate Neo-Renaissance building was constructed on the corner of Sokolská and Veveří Streets according to plans by two of its teachers, Vojtěch Dvořák and Karel Welzl. The two architects knew each other from their student days in Prague and Vienna (where they had studied under Theophil von Hansen), and after being reunited by their engagement at the technical school in Brno, they together designed a number of civil and religious buildings.
For the new headquarters of this Czech school in what was still a mostly German city, Dvořák and Welzl chose a lofty, almost imperial architecture with classically designed wings with dominant vertical elements such as tower-like projections and a giant order of columns and pilasters that nevertheless is symbolically firmly rooted to the ground by a massive socle with banded rustication. The showcase ceremonial forms used on this new building for a leading Czech educational institution reflected the emancipatory power and ambitions of Brno’s Czech population at the turn of the 20th century, when the contest between the German and Czech camps regarding the character of Brno and Moravia had reached a peak.
The building’s street-facing elevations were composed in a strictly symmetrical manner. Predominant vertical elements include a giant order of columns and pilasters with Ionic capitals, plus three corner projections with attics decorated by obelisks and acroteria. Horizontally, the facade is divided by cordon ledges into three bands: the ground floor, the two upper floors and a band below the roof cornice. The central entryway on the southern wing projects out from the facade in the form of a massive avant-corps flanked by a pair of tower-like projections topped by pavilions. The three window bays on the central avant-corps are separated by two pairs of columns holding up an entablature finished by a protruding consoled cornice.
The first-floor windows on the avant-corps are framed by aedicules whose lunette pediments were decorated with vegetal ornamentation surrounding circular medallions depicting relief portraits of important inventors and builders from the Czech lands (Ressel, Rejsek, Diviš). Rectangular relief cartouches on the corner projections bear the names of important figures from European architecture, science and technology (Bramante, Palladio, Peter Parler, Matthias of Arras, Monge, Woolf, Stephenson, Watt, Archimedes, Galilei, Faraday).
The facades of the two tower-like projections on the avant-corps are broken up by niches with shell-like arches housing allegorical sculptures by Franta Uprka representing engineering and architecture. On top of these towers and extending above the regular roofline are two pavilions with a distinctive combination of architectural elements such as cornices, pilaster strips, pilasters, triglyphs, mascarons and garlands, all underneath a tented roof with a profiled cornice. The attics of the avant-corps are crowned with pylons and acroteria, with ornamentally rendered pinnacles at the centre of the roof. The roof of the central avant-corps is topped by a decorative lattice.
Similarly elaborate designs were also included in the predominantly double-pile interiors with corridors spanned by a series of dome vaults whose rounded triangular sections are held up by semi-circular arches extending from Tuscan consoles with lambrequin plasterwork. Inside the avant-corps in the southern wing is a spacious staircase flanked by two pairs of Tuscan columns.
The building still houses an educational institute, the oldest technical school in Moravia. The home of the Secondary Technical School and Higher Vocational School is today a magnificent and well-preserved building from a time when dreams of progress and knowledge were manifested via lofty classical forms recalling to the ancient roots of European civilization.
Aleš Homola