Purkyně Student Hall of Residence

Purkyně Hall of Residence, located just below the hill Palackého Vrch, was the starting point for what would become the campus of Brno University of Technology (VUT) and was built to address the post-war shortage of student accommodation. The architectural competition for the design, which was held in 1965, was won by the team of VUT Professor Viktor Formáček. The main architect and structural engineer was Jaroslav Medek. Construction work began in 1968. By the standards of that time it was a comfortable accommodation facility. It had a capacity of 2,559 beds, in addition to which there were studio apartments for couples, a cafeteria, a refectory and a medical centre. The hall of residence complex, comprising four buildings, was completed in 1973 and stands out for its urban design and the gradation of the individual parts of the complex, which express the diversity of its internal functions. The buildings are paired, one of five floors with one of thirteen floors, and are interconnected by a two-storey building accommodating the reception area and common rooms. The facades of the high-rise buildings were vertically segmented by sheet metal in a U-shape, resembling pilaster strips. They were divided horizontally by grey-blue aluminium frames. The ground floor exterior was lined with brick-effect cladding. Since 2011, the dormitories have undergone a gradual renovation for thermal insulation and therefore the relief features have disappeared . The exteriors of the lower buildings remain unchanged, their light grey facades contrast with the dark grey areas of the window ledges. VK