The Fostinum
The collector is the true resident of the interior. The collector dreams his way not only into a distant or bygone world but also into a better one.
- Walter Benjamin
Brno, the largest city in Moravia, was long an architectural rival to the Czech capital of Prague. This was especially true during the height of Czechoslovak functionalism with architects like Bohuslav Fuchs, Josef Kranz, Josef Polášek, and Jiří Kroha calling Brno home. Two key exhibitions took place in Brno: the Výstava soudobé kultury (Exhibition of Contemporary Culture) in 1928 and the Výstava stavebnictví a bydlení (Exhibition of Construction and Housing) in 1933. Many structures were included in these exhibitions, with the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture located at the Brno Fairgrounds and the Exhibition of Construction and Housing including many structures located around the city, for example, the Kino Avia, the Villa of Jiří Kroha, and the Villa of Josef Kranz, which you can see above. The buildings above include those designed by Bohuslav Fuchs, Vinzenz Baier, Josef Polášek, Jiří Kroha, Josef Kranz, Vladimir Karfík, Jaroslav Rössler, and other architects of the 1920s and 1930s. For more pictures of functionalist architecture, see my pages on Czech and Slovak functionalism and the Atelier de Sandalo.