The monumental building of the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute for Moravia and Silesia (Arbeiterunfallversicherungsanstalt für Mähren und Schlesien in Brünn), designed in the style of geometric modernism by architect Bohumír František Antonín Čermák, is one of the most important early modernist buildings in Brno.
Preparations for the building’s construction had been underway since 1910 under the auspices of the office of city architect Josef Jellinek, whose employee Josef Fiala drafted the floor plans.
A public architecture competition for the facades, announced on 14 February 1912, garnered 18 submissions. The selection was limited to architects born or working in Moravia – a reflection of the Moravian patriotism of the era. First prize went to Bohumír Čermák, whose modernist design was particularly appreciated for its rational approach. It also corresponded to the client’s wish that, with a view to the building’s purpose, its appearance should avoid excessive ostentation both inside and out. Construction was carried out in 1912–1913 by the builder Josef Müller.
Čermák’s unique architectural design began with the typical palace scheme but expanded on it by working with the newly emerging geometric modernism. The monumental building’s forcefulness results from the interplay of geometric lines and the repeated use of the square as a dominant visual element (on the roof turrets and the stucco ceiling in the foyer). This modernist expressiveness culminates in the upper parts of the attic superstructure in the form of a stepped roof and square turrets that give the building its unmistakable silhouette, visible from afar.
The four-storey building with a U-shaped ground plan has a monumental street front that is vertically articulated by three avant-corps. These are accentuated by a continuous second-floor balcony running the full width of the building, and also by semi-circular windows on the middle of the facade. Another balcony protrudes from the first floor, above the monumental entrance portal in the central avant-corps. The facade decoration in the style of geometric modernism works with basic geometric shapes. The attic above the central avant-corps features a monumental frieze with allegories of six professions: farmer, blacksmith, carpenter, bricklayer, textile worker and printer. The reliefs were apparently made according to a conceptual design by the sculptor Leopold Hohl, who produced plaster models in 1913. The final pieces were nevertheless created by the Brno sculptor Alfred Dressler, who followed Hohl’s models only loosely, adding his own touches in terms of both form and content.
The first relief, an allegory of agriculture, depicts a reaper by a field of grain. Next to him, two blacksmiths with a cogwheel are an allegory of industry. The third relief depicts a carpenter with various tools (axe, plane, band saw/cutter), The fourth shows work on a construction site: two bricklayers building a wall while a woman mixes mortar behind them. The fifth relief of a worker at a textile machine represents the textile industry, an important industry in Brno. And on the sixth relief, a worker in a print shop shows a newspaper to a man at a printing press. The reliefs, which can be interpreted as representations of labour and of the potential hidden dangers posed by tools and machines as the cause of injuries, were above all a comprehensible way of communicating the insurance institute’s primary mission, but they are also notable for being one of the first realistic depictions of social themes in Moravian monumental sculpture.
The building of the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute also stands out for the use of new technologies and state-of-the-art technical equipment. For example, it was equipped with an extensive hot water system for the washrooms and the central heating, the operation of which was ensured by an electric pump from the Viennese company Zentralheizungswerke A. G.
The partially preserved grand interiors are equally deserving of our attention. The vestibule, for instance, is one of Brno’s most beautiful modernist interiors: its ceiling and walls are decorated with stucco coffers and fluted strips, and surviving elements include blue Belgian marble on the lower parts of the walls, light ‘biscuit-shaped’ floor tiles, striking modernist lamps on the low walls framing the staircase, and a glass partition whose windowpanes and doors are fitted with faceted glass. In the corridor leading to the lift, a two putti in niches on opposite walls symbolize agriculture and industry. The Art Nouveau motif of a stylized bell flower can be found throughout the common areas – in the stained-glass windows, on the ornamental stuccowork along the edges of the pillars and in the stucco medallions on the ceilings of the staircase landings. A large part of the original furnishings made of black oak and green leather was created in the artistic crafts workshop founded by architect Čermák himself.
Pavla Cenková
