Jiří Kroha

Jiří Kroha is a pioneer of Czech architecture. Already in the first half of the 1920s he started to plan and built first modernist houses.

He studied architecture Prague until 1918 and became a member of the art club Mánes and Artěl. He designed furniture and decorations first. In 1920 he started to work for a Prague administration as a technical official. At the same time he was responsible for one of the first modernist buildings in the towns of Mladá Boleslav, Kosmonosy and Benátky nad Jizerou.

In 1926 he changed his position and teached architecture at the Brno Technical University. He and his family moved to Brno, where he designed several houses.

His political orientation was left wing, why he travelled in the 1930s to the Soviet Union. So he mostly worked on housing issues for small, affordable apartments. Already in Czechoslovakia he lost his job for political reasons. However, he was rehabilitated and was allowed to work as an architect again after a two-year ban. Due to the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Germany he was arrested in two concetration camps. In 1940 he was set free because of health reasons, but was observed by the police until the end of the war.

In the postwar Czechoslovakia he helped to built a new socialistic country with buildings representing the new political system.

Sources

• Wikipedia Jiří Kroha
• www.archiweb.cz JIří Kroha