The building of the District Sickness Fund (1903–1904) is a dominant landmark of the urban landscape on Milady Horákové Street (originally named Franz-Josef-Strasse). The building, characterized by a striking fair-faced brick facade, was designed by architect Hubert Gessner, at the time an employee of the provincial building authority in Brno. A native of Valašské Klobouky, Gessner was perhaps the most faithful follower of the famous Otto Wagner, under whom he studied at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts in 1894–1898. Gessner’s early works can be found not only in Moravia and Silesia, but also in Vienna, where his work in the Wagnerian style was very popular and where he was one of the main architects involved in the housing construction of the ‘Red Vienna’ period following the First World War.
The five-storey mixed-use building (offices and residential spaces) of the state-run District Sickness Fund uses almost the entire depth of the building plot, with a front and a rear wing connected by a narrow stairwell structure. The compact street-facing elevation contrasts with the highly articulated and strikingly modernist facade of the rear wing, whose composition uses horizontal bands of fair-faced bricks.
The design of the main palace-like facade is based on a classic arrangement, with a tall central portal framed by lateral oriels and a protruding crown cornice. Although this composition was previously used on the Klein Palace (1847–1848, náměstí Svobody 15) – the most important Central European prototype of new middle-class urban housing and a building Gessner would certainly have been familiar with – it is more likely that Gessner was inspired by the architect Franz von Krauss, a prominent protagonist of Viennese modernism. Gessner used a variation of this scheme on several different occasions, including the slightly younger Hotel Slezský Dvůr in Opava (1905, now demolished), which had had a similar though less distinctive facade. Nevertheless, with its clear design, simplicity and authenticity, the District Sickness Fund can be considered a radical implementation of this traditional concept. Decorative ceramic, stone, glass and metal elements of a distinctly functional character help to highlight the facade’s tectonic volumetric composition, which clearly manifests the architect’s modernist ideas. The only contrast with the building’s functional architecture (including its facade) is its single Romantic motif – the tall roof superstructure. With this project, Gessner fulfilled his teacher Otto Wagner’s ideal of what the art historian Pavel Zatloukal calls ‘a synthesis between the old and the new world with respect for both.’
Except for two commercial spaces on either side of the main entrance, the building has been entirely residential since 1949. Following comprehensive restoration work in 2013–2016, it today is a valuable local example of the geometric Vienna Secession. With its high-quality early modernist concept, Gessner’s District Sickness Fund significantly deviates from the Brno’s other architectural production at the time, which was still mostly based on more classicist positions.
Pavla Cenková
