The House of Cyril Bouda
Oldřich Starý designed a house with a studio and an adjoining room for etching works for the painter and graphic artist Cyril Bouda. He connected the two-level studio with the living space by using a sliding wall and, in addition, he also connected it with the garden using a progressive outdoor staircase.
Architect
Oldřich Starý
(*1884 Prague +1971 Prague)
A pioneer of Czech functionalism, architect, theoretician, and teacher; he is one of the most prominent figures in Czech modern architecture of the interwar period, with its principles of “new architecture,” purity, truthfulness of form, and the belief that architecture is not an art but a “scientifically-based cultural task.” He soon became a harsh critic of excessive façade decoration. Bearing in mind Le Corbusier’s view of the house as a “machine for living,” he designed four houses in Baba (Heřman, Bouda, Vaváček, and Sutnar). He is the author of the palace building on Národní třída in Prague, which he designed for the Czechoslovak Werkbund in 1936, and he was also the Werkbund’s president from 1935. He also presided over the Architects’ Club and was the editor of the functionalist “Stavba” Magazine. He was a professor and later the rector of CTU in Prague.
1903-1909
studied architecture with Professors Josef Schulz and Jan Evangelista Koula at CTU in Prague
1912-1919
professor at the State Technical School in Pilsen
1913
founding member of the Architects’ Club
1920-1945
professor at the State Technical School in Prague
1920-1948
President of the Architects’ Club
1922-1939
editor-in-chief of the “Stavba” Magazine
1939-1971
editor-in-chief of the “Architektura” Magazine
1945-1970
professor of architecture at CTU in Prague
1948
Rector of CTU
Significant Works
1928
house at the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture in Czechoslovakia, Brno
1929-1932
villas in Prague-Dejvice 1934-36
1932
houses of Iška and Ladislav Sutnar, František Heřman, Cyril Bouda and Karla and Gustav Vaváček, Baba, Prague-Dejvice
1934-1936
House of Art Industry on Národní třída in Prague (in cooperation with František Zelenka)
1935
villa in Prague-Braník
Owner
Cyril Bouda
In 1930, Cyril Bouda (1901-1984) married Eva Šimonová, the daughter of T. F. Šimon, for whom the painter worked as an assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. During the 1930s, Cyril Bouda won a number of prestigious awards both at home and abroad, e.g. the national Schmidt Prize for Graphics, an honourable mention at an international competition in New York, or the Grand Prix for book art at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris in 1937, and later recognition as a national artist. The Bouda family is still living in the house to this day.
