Pavilion of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

The designer of the Pavilion of the Academy of Fine Arts at the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture in Czechoslovakia held in Brno was one of the most prominent figures of this school, architect Josef Gočár. The pavilion is a plain two-level building in the shape of a block with a segmented protrusion on the ground floor. The ferro-concrete skeleton filled with brickwork creates shallow niches in the main facade. The sculptural decorations in them lend the structure Classicist features. The creator of the allegories of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was a student of the Academy, Marie Kulhánková. The plastic facade was most spectacular when bathed in the ceremonial night lighting designed by Miroslav Prokop. Josef Gočár strove to bring a sufficient amount of daylight into the interior so that he could create an ideal exhibition area. The expositions of architectural designs of the students of the academy were lit by the ribbon windows and linear skylight on the roof. Gočár may have drawn inspiration for this work from the pavilion by Josef Hofmann erected at the Kunstschau exhibition in Vienna in 1908, which Gočár himself visited. At present this building suffers from an unfit connection with the neighbouring Pavilion of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design by Pavel Janák, and its unique facade, which has lost its sculptural decorations, is hidden in the overgrown vegetation. LV