FROM CUBISM TO MODERNISM,
THE STUDY OF PAVEL JANÁK’S WORK
Abstract
The study focuses on the work of architect and theorist Pavel Janák (1882-1956) – as an early proponent of Cubist architecture in Bohemia. He was no mere a Cubist but was concerned to develop innovative figures of architecture in Prague that yet possessed both historical continuity and universal validity. The investigation associates geometric relations present in Janák’s theory as proposed in the essay “The Prism and the Pyramid”(1911-1912). This eventually will lead to the description of an original architectural language present in Janák’s buildings within different historical periods.
Janák’s creative activity is composed of 3 distinct phases: the first period is of the dominant years of Czech Cubism since 1911, which is consciously directed to the Cubist. The second period is after the WWI, he attempted to create a national style because of the post-war tense nationalism and changed economic conditions. The last period is of functional architecture that is still developing. By tracing the three periods of the development of Janák’s theories and trying to situate the sources within the historical context, the study is to make a depiction of consistencies in Janák’s architectural vocabulary, rules and operations deployed and to discuss the process of attitude’s transformation to deal with the relationship of form and function.
The aim of this study is to outline the structure of a possible grammar of Janák’s architectural language, ‘form’ was embraced as a response to the technical separation by offering a universal law of aesthetic independent of extrinsic facts of technological or historical changes. According to Neoclassical rhetoric, if figure is dependent on custom, which is customary or arbitrary beauty, then form becomes the antithesis, which can be viewed as positive or natural beauty, dependent on geometry. Just as figure includes conceptual and associative meaning, form excludes it. Form, in its exclusion, can be reduced to as “a historic degree zero”, which is the result of the expression of the essence of the architecture.
Keywords: Cubism, essence of figure, structure of form, geometrical generation
INTRODUCTION
The role of Pavel Janák (1881-1956) played in the architectural history of Czechoslovakia was as important as his thankless: the character of an explorer, revolutionary, pioneer, spiritual mentor, and philosopher. He was a student of Otto Wagner, a contemporary of the Bohemia architects Josef Gočár (1880-1945), Josef Chochol (1880-1956), Vlastislav Hofman (1884-1964). He represented the connecting link between the different historical architectural period - Cubism, Nationalism, and Modernism in Prague, the city that managed to keep its own pace and unique feather during developing smoothly towards the modernity in the age of turbulence.
In the whole architectural career of Janák, he was always determined to create something of his own. It can be seen not only in the form of his attribute to the Cubism period in Czech, but also in the theoretical writings and realization of the buildings. His theories were not only architectural, but also influenced by his sculptor colleagues. It is also interesting to observe how Pavel Janák’s architecture changed over the years under the impressions of the Viennese residence within his sketches. The elements of Wagner’s influence were notable: which counting on the smooth facades and the geometric structure “Renaissance and classicist tendencies that were modified here and there by a certain latent Oriental mood and a somewhat effete tendency toward decoration” [1], was evident in his work. Even from today’s point of view, Janák’s development is unique in the world of European architecture. Together with his colleagues, Janák redefined the art industry and had even inserted the elements of architectural Cubism in the design of furniture, decorative crafts of glass and ceramics. Victor Wallerstein wrote about him in 1913 that he was a “spiritus rector” in the development of Czech architecture.
THE CREATIVE STAGES OF PAVEL JANÁK
Pavel Janák really did not miss anything that took place in the Czech architecture of the first half of the 20th century: the overwhelming historicism; the influence of Art Nouveau through Wagner of modern experience in Vienna at the turn of the century; the participation of Architectural Cubism Group of Fine Artists in Prague when stayed in Kotěřa’s Studio; after the I World War, the formulation of the so-called National style then the transition from the Dutch Civilization to the Functionalism; the development and reconstruction of premises and historical buildings in Prague. All these events retroactively let Janak’s critical texts initiate and accompany his whole career. Social advancement, coupled with his admirable professional career, led him a double succession as a professor of the School of Applied Arts and Architect of Prague Castle, as the long-term presidency of the Union of Czechoslovak Works and the Union of Architects.
Early Education, Working in Kotěřa’s Studio. After graduating from the grammar school, Janák began his study of architecture: several years of practicing with established Prague architects; a short stay at Otto Wagner in Vienna; a study trip to Italy; work at Kotěřa’s studio which brought him the experience and the opportunity to create remarkable designs.
During staying in the Jan Kotěra’s studio, the first project of Janák was put into practice, which combined the influence of the integration from different architects, especially the “protruded cornices” [2] known from Vienna embodiments applied by Wagner and Plečnik. Similar cornices were also found in the Zacherl Palace, which is located not far from St. Stephen’s Cathedral, in the center of Vienna, ranked among Plečnik’s works.
Between 1909-1919: Czech Architectural Cubism. During Janák’s absence in Prague, when he stayed in Italy and Vienna, Prague’s architects developed a new style, a geometric modernity that Janák met at Kotěřa’s Studio in projects for Laichterov’s house and pavilion for the Jubilee Exhibition.
In this period, Janák’s drafts were dramatically aggressive, which revealed that the dramatization of matter and its decomposition into the system of tapered surfaces. It is quite obvious when comparing the sketch and the realized building for the Jakub family in Jičín (Fig.1). The overall figure of the whole building was dominated by inclined plane made up of slanted surfaces. Sides of the house were cropped, the ledges were extending forward diagonally, and the windows were framed with a sloping inward direction. The entrance door was on the northern side with a beveled tympanum at the end of the road. As seen from the ground plan, there is a polygonal porch surrounding the garden from the south, with the beveled sides of house, together they formed a polygonal space. In this case, the same chamfer is not only made in the perimeter, but also in the inner corners of the room.
Another project in Pelhřimov commissioned by Janák is the House of Dr.Fára (Figg.2,3), which located in the historic reserved area. Janák was required to reconstruct the Baroque house, and make it integrate well with the neighboring buildings. However, on the old bohemia square, the old elements had a deep symbiosis with the modern ones. The intention of the design was to provide a shaded shield to cover the modern facades, so that the square would be surrounded by Baroque gables showing an entire image.
Shortly thereafter, his article Prism and pyramid (Hranol a pyramid) (1911-1912), of the theory of Cubist architecture came out.
National Style 1919-1924. The second phase began after the I World War, after his return from the military service a new element came into Janák’s projects. He created a set of shapes of colors with the national spirit to decorate the facades. As years passed by, the colors of the ornaments faded, the forms grew, just like of the monumental Adriatica in Prague. This symbiosis of geometric shapes reveals Janák’s manuscript, which is so recognizable.
The first and cleanest version of the national style was in Moravská Ostrava 1920 (Fig.4,5). Janak had sketched the facade of office and residential building of Moravská Inspectorate of Ferdinand’s Northern Railway with the decorative elements, but compared to that was constructed later in Prague, the draft was flat and lacked with depth of the relief. Then individual phases of the national style can be clearly distinguished by comparison of the family villas and the facade designs of two industrial buildings: a Power Plant in Háje u Třeštiny and an administrative building of Sochor Textile Plants in Dvůr Králové. The brick facade of industrial buildings was simple ornamented but not as colorful as the family houses in Strašnice, the reliefs of the facades seems still shallow, but with no depth.
Modernism/Classicism. After the restoration project of facade of Riunione Adriatica, Janák had definitely overcome the national style that he himself shaped. Indeed, there seems to be a direct connection between his journey to Holland (16th - 29th September 1923) and a sober realization of the visible brickwork in a small art colony of Ořechovka in Prague.
In parallel, Janák received two more extensive construction contracts: the Škoda Plant (1924-1926) (Fig.6) in Prague, and the Autoklub Republika (Fig.7) of Czechoslovakia. The original design of the Škoda Factory building was assumed an interesting connection between the existing old palace and the new architecture, similar to the symbiosis that Janák proposed for the Braun House between 1909-1910. Replacing of the old architectural solution, a multi-storey house with a rhythmic facade was built around the corner and the length of which was double enlarged. The fourth-story pilasters rhythmize the facade on which the window axes alternate monotonously. Above the architrave was another monumental superstructure, thanks to which the palace reaches the same height as the tower of neighboring Riunione Insurance Company. The building has a dark granite facade and has a heavy, oppressive impression.
The Autoklub House was no longer that monumental as the Škoda Factory building, but there were also emphasized elements of classicist concept and a monotonous course of axes, two-story pilasters, the balcony and balustrade were decorated with dental cut as well as the cornice.
Functionalism. After had largely develop the National style and made it enclosed with a Classicalism figure, consequently, under an exclusively international influence, Janák didn’t represent as ideologically as Karel Teige, instead, about ideological position, Janák and Functionalist fundamentalists were essentially different, as shown in the publications on the magazine Stavba. The Functionalists bring collages from different areas of life, such as collective housing, healthy nutrition, nudism [3], meanwhile, Janák neither advocated the theory of purely scientific architecture, nor did claim that architecture was not art [4].
When built his own villa (1932) (Fig.8,9) and the villa of sculptor Josef Maratka (1933-1934) he used his ideas of a small living space with small bedrooms. But he did not go as far as Teige, who claimed that every householder should have his own room with one bed. Janák left enough room for the double bed. However, he repeatedly wondered whether a solution had been found for the optimum smallest apartment or not, and was increasingly concerned about the issues of living space [5]. In both of the above-mentioned villas, Janák placed the staircase centrally (Fig. 10), in the middle of the house, unlike the functionalists who preferred to place them on the edge, such as what had done his students’ with the projects of the villas at Baba, thus confirmed his hobby of the middle, as demonstrated in 1911 in Jičín and in 1919 in the Kozin project in Slovenia.
However, let us return to the chronological development and start with the functionalist building that he designed in 1927 - the airport building and the radiotelegraphic station in Mariánské Lázně. Unfortunately, it was dropped and no longer exists. No other Janák’s structure has so much functionalistic features as this slim, elongated reinforced concrete skeleton with different objects on both sides, one end of the three-story tower and at the opposite end of the circular, two-stores, completely glazed room in which it was restaurant. In the middle longitudinal sections were check-in counters.
Other designs, such as the 1960 House Holman in Prague, or Wenceslas Square, 1929, on the site of Hotel Julis, were created under the influence of Functionalism and resemble the hotel and the Avion café designed by Bohuslav Fuchs in Brno in 1927.
Janák’s last larger public building, a prayer house of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church in Prague’s Vinohrady, originated in the first proposals of 1929 and was completed in 1932. The three-part building of the Hus Choir reflects the Italian influence - Janák separates the dwelling house, with a ceremonial prayer room and a bell tower. As can be seen from the various proposals, Janák was gradually working in his way. In front of the two massive cubic objects, a staircase was designed with balustrade leading to the entrance. On this side, it is seen a view of vast white face and a filigreed and airy tower playing with light and shadow. Inside, the prayer room is sober and empty, the narrow windows inlaid with glass bricks transmits only a faint light.
Baba, Work of Society of The Czechoslovak Association. Because the extraordinary position of Baba settlement within Janák’s work, despite the architectural part, we will also focus on the whole project process and the social background.
In the context of the economic catastrophe after war, potential investors were worried about such an experiment of residence settlement, so the Union of Czechoslovak Works subsequently decided to promote the investor-architect’s conventional approach. As a solution, it was probably proposed by Janák to offer membership to investors, in order to create a common platform for different personalities. Meanwhile, the investors could have a prospect of being at the top, in the true sense of the word, in a circle of other like-minded figures. As a result, did the peddler talk about a compromise that has come to fruition architectural qualities? Nevertheless, their evaluation is very positive. Even though too much co-decision rights were given to the investors, some negative effects were signed on the overall result [6].
Baba settlement is located in the town of Dejvic situated in the northwest of Prague. Janák, as the chief designer of the settlement, was in charge of implementing a modification of the regulatory plan, which should only cover a part of the complex, registered under Block No.13. Janák divided the area into two parts, thereby acquiring smaller land plots. Roads follows the contour of the site; elongated sites of building allowed the rectangular structure which, in accordance with the principles of functionalists, permitting the maximum access to sunlight on south-facing terraces and gardens. Of the layout of individual plots and the location of the building, Janák was very much concerned with the optimal use of the terrain and the location on the southern slope. He proposed an alternately “zigzag” like distribution of the houses so that each family of the inhabitants could have a view of Prague.
After all, projects of the Baba Settlement results in the most lucrative works of Janák, even though they do not reach as a high architectural quality as the local buildings.
THE GRAMMAR OF JANÁK’S ARCHITECTURAL LANGUAGE
“Architecture is a visible, permanently active force. When something is more visible, it is due to this force, when something should be made more visible, the force has to be activated.” [P. Janák, 1911]
While seeking an appropriate spatial and formal expression and one adequate to his time and place, how to make space visible, for Janák, is a conundrum that reappeared frequently. His conception of architecture clearly anchored in the realm of visual perception, like a sign system. If it can be conceived that his architecture works as a sign system, which means language, it will be possible decomposed as semantics, morphology, and syntax, which corresponds form, figure, and composition.
Firstly, nowhere is this essential compression more significant than in the phenomenon of Relief, a form that mediates between plane and space. “The shape is on the surface, the matrix behind it, dramatized form of carving” [7]. The relief system denoted enrichment, animation, intending to more complex internal structures. And to express optically the values of round sculpture through the medium of relief is to express essence in a tight abbreviation, to add significance that in turn generate a more complex outline and transform the plane into a single powerful relief. One of the most successful, and the closest to his theoretical goals, is the facade design of the power plant in Pelhřimově nad Labem (Fig.11), which in Janák’s realization validates the aspirations of the relieve to achieve a dynamic animation of mass in the manner of their historical antecedent. Secondly, the space-creating possibilities of a Triangular form preoccupied Janák for much of his Cubist period, leading him to examine them in various contexts, but particularly in that of perception (Fig.12). But the ideal of internal unity in the relationship between plan and elevation, of invoking the architectural content through the medium of the facade was never fulfilled. Thirdly, the analogy with the Pyramid consisted in its “being both the core and the minimum of corporeal dimension”. For Janák, of a variety of plans of disparate cultural types, he concluded that it was the triangular, rather than the square, ratio that dominated the formative stages of architectural history and, most particularly, that at medieval architecture. Ultimately, he concluded that it was primarily the “triangle square, which is both the base and the constructive probe - a circumscribed equilateral triangle” [8]. Exceptional in this respect was Janák’s competition proposal for the Žižkov monument in Prague (1913) (Fig.13), as elaborated in two alternative schemes in collaboration with his friend, the sculptor Otto Gutfreund. This compelling pyramidal structure of crystalline forms comes the closest to the ideals of spiritual abstraction.
COMPLEXITY OF FIGURE AND PURITY OF FORM
The function constitutes the actual truth of architecture; the form can at best be an expression of that truth.
Jan Kotěřa, “O novém umění” [On New Art],
1900
Functionalism, just the word itself, provokes a negative or even mechanical reaction. In this way, discussions and rhetoric lean more toward stylistic reference and cultural meaning. Pavel Janák, who had worked in the Studio of Jan Kotěřa, had exposed a radically different view.
Towards the ideological questions, the attitude of Janák from functionalist, was different. He has never renounced the artistic claim to link Riegel’s artistic desire (“Kunstwollen”) [9] with the purpose of building. The idea of form has neoclassical roots where beauty became more customary rather than natural [10]. According to Neoclassical rhetoric, if figure is dependent on custom, then form can be viewed as positive or natural beauty, dependent on geometry. Just as figure includes conceptual and associative meaning, form excludes it. Form, in its exclusion, can be reduced to as “a-historic degree zero” Creativity, it will advance in its pursuit of plastic form, and in the plastic realization of architectural concepts.
Conclusion: Dutch influence, classicism, constructivism and functionalism - this is not Janák’s self-developed architectonic means of expression. Form’s primacy over function and its spiritual and perceptual roots, were strongly advocated by the Czech Cubist architects even though several, including Janák. As an adaptable, flexible person, it simply takes on the tendencies of the 1920s, enriches them with their own elements and leads them to a successful realization. Janák did not accept constructivism and functionalism as a political-ideological social program, as was promoted by a young generation of architects around K. Teige. He has aesthetically and stylistically translated his ideas into social, functional and moral architecture. This form also then becomes more about revealing aspects in buildings that are not readily apparent in the external world, which has essentially been lost or disconnected from meaning. He set the abstract thoughts of forms above the individual properties of materials, not only does he respect, but also counts on the strength and bearing properties of materials, which is exposed certain stresses and tensions from the custom.
REFERENCES
[1] K. Teige, (Transl. into Eng. Ž. Murray & D. Britt), Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia and Other Writings, Los Angeles, 2000, Jan Kotěra and His Times, pp. 97-113.
[2] N. Kiesling, Pavel Janák, Prague, 2011.
[3] J. Kroha, Věda a bydlení (Science and Housing), in: Stavba 11, pp. 184-188, 1932-1933.
[4] K. Teige, Liquidierung der Kunst(Liquidation of art). Frankfurt 1968, specifically in: Der Konstruktivismus und die Liquidierung der Kunst (Constructivism and the liquidation of art), Prague, pp. 53-69, 1925.
[5] P. Janák, Rozřešili jsme již nejmenší byt?( We have solved the smallest apartment?), in: Styl 11, pp. 81-83, 1931-1932.
[6] S. Templ, (Transl. into engl. K. Lum.), Baba, The Werkbund Housing Estate in Prague, Basel, pp. 21-37, 1999.
[7] A. Stocks, “Stones of Rimini,” in The critical Writings of Adrian Stokes, vol.1 London, p.233, 1978.
[8] Ž. Murray, Sources Of Cubist Architecture In Bohemia: The Theories Of Pavel Janák, (manuscript) Montreal, 1990.
[9] A. Riegl, Problems of style: foundations for a history of ornament, Princeton, 1993.
[10] Cf. A. Colquhoun, Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change, London, 1981.