An architect, painter, interior and furniture designer, theoretician, and teacher; a student of Josef Gočár at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts. During his stay in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, he was interested in functionalist buildings, Bauhaus architecture, and Dutch rationalism. Three exceptional houses in Baba (Zaorálek, Herain, and Čeněk) marked the culmination of his functionalist work in which he applied the functionalist principles: a free floor plan, large rooms connected to outdoor sundecks, bright façades, and strip windows. His work also shows characteristics of the nautical (cabin-like) style: rounded shapes of buildings and windows. For example, he put a captain’s bridge on the roof of the Herain villa. Even his interiors and furniture displayed functionalist and purist characteristics. Following a falling-out with the builders, he focused on landscape architecture and urban planning, which he summarised in the publication Obytná krajina (1947). Under the socialist regime, he remained a lecturer at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts thanks to the architect Frágner.

Ladislav Žák

(*1900 Prague +1973 Prague)

1919-1924
studied painting with Professor Karel Krattner at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

1924-1927
studied architecture with Professor Josef Gočár at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

1927-1930
taught drawing at the technical schools in Brno and Pilsen

1927-1948
independent architect in Prague

1945-1973
associate professor of Garden and Landscape Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

Significant Works

1932
houses of Ludmila and Karel Herain, Bohumil Čeněk and Hugo Zaorálek, Baba, Prague-Dejvice

1932-33
Dr. Ing. Miroslav Hain’s villa, Prague-Vysočany

1934-35
villa of the film director Martin Frič, Prague-Hodkovičky

reconstruction of his own residential building with small apartments, Prague-Letná

1936-37
villa of the actress Lída Baarová, Prague-Dejvice

1946
memorial to the victims of WWII, Ležáky

Realised buildings in Baba Housing Estate

1932 houses of Ludmila and Karel Herain, Bohumil Čeněk and Hugo Zaorálek, Baba, Prague-Dejvice