Catastrophe in Prague. (View).During August's floods in Prague, the National Architecture Archive was inundated in·un·date tr.v. in·un·dat·ed, in·un·dat·ing, in·un·dates 1. To cover with water, especially floodwaters. 2. . This was a disaster for Czech architecture, and for professional and historical studies worldwide. The collections chronicle chronicle, official record of events, set down in order of occurrence, important to the people of a nation, state, or city. Almanacs, The Congressional Record in the United States, and the Annual Register in England are chronicles. the development of Czech architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and before, including irreplaceable archives of movements like Czech Cubism Czech Cubism was avant-garde art movement of Czech proponents of the Cubism active mostly in Prague from 1910 to 1914. Members of this movement realised the epochal significance of Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and attempted to extract its components for their and Czech Functionalism functionalism, in art and architecture functionalism, in art and architecture, an aesthetic doctrine developed in the early 20th cent. out of Louis Henry Sullivan's aphorism that form ever follows function. , buildings including the National Theatre and the Town Hall, and on individuals such as Joze Plecnik and Josef Zitek. Founded in 1910 by professors at the Czech Technical University, the collections include about half a million items: drawings, photographs, documents and models. They were housed in the Baroque baroque, in art and architecture baroque (bərōk`), in art and architecture, a style developed in Europe, England, and the Americas during the 17th and early 18th cent. Invalidovna palace and were flooded by three and a quarter metres of water. Huge efforts by individual volunteers ensured that most of the documents were removed, and they have been frozen (like others from different collections) in a large food storage warehouse. Now, the archive documents that were not flooded have to be removed from the Invalidovna, and a new workshop must be set up to preserve at least part of the frozen collection. Ideally, all will be restored, but the work will take years and enormous expense. Such resources are completely beyond local organizations, so a world-wide appeal for help has been launched. Any help, financial, material, professional or personal will be welcome. Further information about SOS SOS, code letters of the international distress signal. The signal is expressed in International Morse code as … — — — … (three dots, three dashes, three dots). ARCHITECTURE ARCHIVE!!! can be obtained from the School of Architecture, Prague Academy of Fine Arts, arcb@avu.cz (+420 2 333 80 107) or Architect magazine, redakce@casopolis-architekt.cz (+420 2 24 93 15 50). A bank account has been set up for the appeal; its number is CEKO CZ PP 179310745/0300. |
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