Speed Date / SVOBODOVÁ BLAHA, architects
A (Anna Svobodová), O (Ondřej Blaha)
Where are you from?
A: Prague.
O: Vsetín.
Where did you study?
A: FA TUL Liberec, FA University of Ljubljana, AVU Prague.
O: FA CTU, TU München, AVU Prague.
Who was your best teacher?
Michal Kuzemenský. Realism, no shortcuts. I don’t know, since then architecture is everywhere. He said “Imagine something that doesn’t exist”, while he had a precise method of working and showed us references.
Emil Přikryl. Quite a strong paralysis at first. It seems to me that nobody knew what was going on. But that this illegibility of Emil’s was quite important and on his part quite brilliantly camouflaged and conscious. Although I’m not sure. With most teachers, sooner or later the student is able to understand and imitate their thinking, their method… without making any deliberate effort to do so or to facilitate the work. It seemed to me that Emil Přikryl saw through this before I realized it myself. It held in such a constant state of tension that sometimes you couldn’t help but take a chance.
Lütjens & Padmanabhan were an important intermediate point. Total nerds who can talk contemporarily about the walls in the hallway of the Laurentian Library. We talked in totally abstract architectural language, mainly about proportions. It was actually relaxing, suddenly without all the weight and societal seriousness of architecture. The context is what you choose. The theme of the semester was called Renaissance, I was handed a photo of the Palazzo dei Diamanti and Hejduk in Kreuzberg, and in a week I had to turn in a photo of the interior of a 1:20 model. Then I was to build a house based on that interior. I was making a house, they probably didn’t even know where it stood. On the table, the model itself, without the surroundings, 1:50 scale, about a meter long and a half, which I re-cut after every consultation. I turned the computer on at the end of the semester.
Who were/ are your parents?
A: I grew up with a mother who is a painter.
O: Biology teacher, forensic scientist.
What don’t you enjoy in design?
O: Banality, beautiful colorful naive collages, whatever. But I don’t mean working with the banal.
And on the contrary, what do you?
Trips.
What do you listen to?
O: Tomáš Kopáček and everything he plays for me.
Your favourite film, cartoon, series?
A: Pretty Woman and anything with Marlon Brando.
O: Stalker, Dead Man… The Midnight Gospel, Adult Swim…
Who do you respect as an authority in and out of your field?
O: No, sorry, not an authority. There’s no need for that at all.
What thing did you last buy?
HARIBO Rainbow F!ZZ.
Do you buy professional literature? What was the latest book?
A: Constructing architecture: materials, processes, structures by Andrea Deplazes
O: Civil Engineering II for 2nd year of secondary school, Petr Hájek et al. Too bad it doesn’t exist either handbook of civil engineering applicable in the Czech context by an architect.
Do you vote?
Yes.
Who throws the best parties?
A: Spontaneity.
O: So far, probably 2020.
Your favourite dome?
A: The ice cream dome.
O: Pantheon.
Party dress. Made by…?
vivat_zivot aka Tereza Dvořáková aka vivat_privat I think.
Your hero from the past?
Emanuel Comte, the owner of Malevil Castle.
Best/nicest house?
A: 51 Rue Raynouard, Auguste Perret.
O: Pantheon.
Do you have any stereotypes when you work? How do they show?
A: We do things obliquely now. Turning a staircase, an elevator, a wall – if it doesn’t cause structural complications, it often really helps.
O: That if I want to do it badly, I have the peace of mind and I sit down to do it like I’m going to do it, I don’t come up with anything and I’m annoyed at night because I’ve lost the whole day and tomorrow there won’t be time for it again.
What’s on your desktop?
A: I have no idea.
O: Default background, but it’s slowly becoming invisible..
Best exhibition, work of art?
A: Castelvecchio Museum. The exhibition itself is a work of art.
What do you respect both from the local and foreign design scene? And why?
Kooperative-grossstadt München.
Magdamag.
A lot of architects, really a lot, maybe all of them. Artists, all of them.
Ethics or money?
Money would be better now.
Extraordinary book?
A: Bergman’s The Magic Lantern.
O: The Catcher in the Rye.
Optimist, pessimist, nihilist?
A: Pessimist.
O: Nihilist.
Do you have any hobby?
A: I paint sometimes.
O: I like to play drums with T. Kopáček, like Black Tar Jesus, but it’s not a good time. Sports almost any way.
Solo or in a collective?
A: I guess I prefer to play individually.
O: I’m starting to try to play collectively.
Slovakia as the Promised Land?
O: I guess so. But Anička has never been there.