A travelling exhibition of current projects
Opening: Galerie Ve věži, Novoměstská radnice
Prague, Czech Republic
6.10.2022
Exhibition organized by atelier Petr Franta Architects & Associates in collaboratin with the CTU CIIRC – Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague. The current project serves as a sequel to the exhibition of architect Petr Franta’s earlier work in Canada “On the Edge” (Prague, Fragner Gallery of Architecture, 2000) and “Ways of Seeing” (Exhibition Hall McGill University 2004). The present exhibition traces Franta’s projects and professional development in last two decades.
Among the first generation born after the end of World War II, Petr Franta stands as one of the most versatile heirs to the legacy of Czech Modernism. His realizations and projects are rooted in his ability to articulate and advance new possibilities of public space, its communicative power and the imperative of linking a multiplicity of functions. An ability to connect and advance these possibilities has accompanied the architect’s search for employing innovative environmental and design technologies together with material elements inherent in each specific commission.
Franta’s realizations and projects with an international outreach include a broad range of ideas of a vastly varying scale and purpose. The CVUT new flagship CIIRC building, a layered glass art installation intended for the Václav Havel Airport, new exhibition circuits in both Pinkas and Spanish synagogues, or an earlier bold transformation of the Upper Station in Karlovy Vary have received important recognition and awards.
Franta’s designs have drawn on a wide variety of forms of cultural life . At the same time, the architect has aimed to create facilities for a host of prestigious historical and museological projects by seamlessly bringing together exteriors and interiors of a building, exemplified by his earlier work in the Imperial stables or the Chapel of the Holy Cross at the Prague Castle. Reframing and material realizations of new itineraries in the two Prague synagogues mentioned above, had been adumbrated by Franta’s earlier work on the Synagogue in Polná with its exhibition telling the story of the Hilsner affair, or the Jewish School in Jičín with its exhibition on Karl Kraus and his circle. The ongoing preservation and expansion of the Church and the parochial precinct in Chvaly also represent an important effort at linking a complex of religious buildings and structures in the context of a broader community life.
Through an ongoing interest in the creation, preservation and revitalization of spiritual spaces – a process, defined by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando as “creation of a zone for an individual within society” – Petr Franta has created perhaps less known, but an impressive record of buildings and transformations which together make a significant contribution towards our understanding of the current forms of our “dialogues with history”.
Irena Žantovská Murray
An architectural historian and curator, former director and Sir Banister Fletcher Librarian, Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Research Fellow Faculty of Architecture FA CTU