The architectural work of Lubomír Šlapeta belongs among the best to have been created in this country in the interwar period. He took an innovative and trans-regional approach to new projects. In them he applied the knowledge gained from his study, work, and sightseeing trips abroad. Although he did not work in what were then the centres of functionalist architecture, which were Prague, Brno and Zlín, thanks to dedicated investors he managed to realise avant-garde ideas about modern architecture on the periphery too.
Lubomír Šlapeta was born into the family of a textile entrepreneur in Místek as one of a pair of twins. His brother Čestmír was likewise a successful architect and they spent much of their professional and academic careers together. After studying at the Czech Real Gymnasium, they entered the Vocational School of Construction in Brno, where the professors Jaroslav Syřiště and Jaroslav Oplt had the greatest influence on them. After their studies, the Šlapeta brothers went their separate ways for a while. Lubomír began his practice in the construction company of Václav Nekvasil in Třinec and then in the office of Milan Babuška in Prague.
During his stay in Prague, Lubomír longed to study architecture abroad. On the recommendation of his colleague Herbert Sprott, he enrolled at the State Academy of Arts and Crafts in Wrocław, where he commenced his studies in the architectural class of Adolf Rading and Hans Scharoun in the autumn of 1928. He impressed his teachers with his first school assignment – the design of a steel-framed house – and they invited him to work in their private studio in Berlin. This practice played a key role in the development of his work. An equally crucial aspect influencing his future growth was a journey he made to the USA. In 1930 he bade farewell to his studies at the university in Wrocław and travelled to New York together with his brother. As a consequence of the financial crisis, they were unable to get long-term work in the office, and therefore they had to return to Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1931. However, they were able to gain inspiration and get to know about American building technologies.
After his return, Lubomír went to Berlin for a short time in the hope of continuing his former collaboration. Unfortunately, because of the growing crisis, he did not succeed there either. He set up an architectural studio in Czechoslovakia together with his brother. Lubomír led the branch in Prague and later Olomouc and Čestmír the one in Moravská Ostrava. They focused mainly on private housing projects, implemented almost exclusively in Moravia (Olomouc, Přerov, Ostrava, Opava, Rožnov, etc.).
Lubomír Šlapetaʼs early architectural work was characterised by the contrast of strict rectangular forms and dynamically shaped masses, often set in wild garden terrains. In the first half of the 1930s, as a follower of what became known as white functionalism, he worked with nautical motifs (circular windows, tubular railings) to enliven the otherwise lapidary, prismatic shapes of his houses, often with glass conservatories, which gave the building an impression of fragility and could wind through an entire floor, as was the case with, for instance, Josef Vondráčekʼs weekend house in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm (1933) or František Kremer‘s villa in Hlučín (1933-1934). At the same time, he dealt with the question of wooden architecture suitable for mountainous landscapes, in which he did not hesitate to employ romantic motifs, such as distinctive gabled roofs, sometimes reaching down to the ground (the weekend house for the Vítěz family in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, 1936-1937). This resulted in a greater variety of building elements, angled and slanted lines, a combination of more materials, and a “heavier” expression. Striking plinths, supporting pillars, or large areas of the façade with exposed, roughly worked stone or brick are very common, always in combination with remarkably shaped window openings, as in the villas of Eduard Liska in Ostrava (1935-1936), Jan Mišauer in Olomouc (1939) or Marie Andrášková in Přerov (1940-1942); he composed the stone or brick plinth in such a way that it would relate effectively to the surrounding terrain.
In the postwar period, Lubomír Šlapeta was the founder of the Department of Art Education at Palacký University in Olomouc, where he worked as a teacher until 1949. However, his architectural and educational activities were disrupted by the arrival of the communist regime. Both Lubomír and Čestmír Šlapeta refused to join the design institute and to accept the doctrine of the only building style of the time considered acceptable – socialist realism. At the same time, collective housing, which was far from their original focus on private projects, began to be dealt with. During the next few years he took part in many architectural competitions, mainly for cultural buildings, but mostly unsuccessfully.
In the 1960s he and his brother managed to go to Germany at the invitation of Hans Scharoun to collaborate on several projects. Čestmír remained abroad, but Lubomír returned in 1969 because of his success in the competition for the design of the Church of St. Nicholas in the village of Tichá near Frenštát pod Radhoštěm (1967-1976), which became one of the few sacral buildings to be realised in the Czech lands during the socialist era and which even today attracts attention with its organically shaped ground plan. This success occupied him almost until his dying day, as it enabled him to establish cooperation with the Church and to receive invitations to reconstruct other churches. In Olomouc he was employed by the Drupos concern and became the author of several types of single-family houses in Olomouc and its surroundings.
Lubomír Šlapeta died on 11 April 1983 in Olomouc. His son, the architect, historian, and theoretician of architecture Vladimír Šlapeta, takes care of his architectural legacy and has rehabilitated his fatherʼs work, which was overlooked until the 1990s.
NK (translation by SG)
Literature
Šárka Belšíková – Ivo Binder (eds.), Posvátné umění v nesvaté době. České sakrální umění 1948–1989, Olomouc 2023, pp. 208–210, 258–259.
Klára Jeništová – Martina Mertová, Architektura v procesu/Architecture in Process. Zrání, Hledání, Odhodlání, Zápas, Snění/Maturation, Searching, Determination, Struggling, Dreaming (exhibition catahlogue), Muzeum umění Olomouc 2022, pp. 16, 22, 39, 41.
Vladimír Šlapeta – Pavel Zatloukal (eds.), Slavné vily Čech, Moravy a Slezska, Praha 2010, pp. 279, 281, 287, 294, 324, 383, 406, 407, 409, 411, 414–415.
Ladislava Horňáková, Čestmír Šlapeta a Lubomír Šlapeta, Prostor Zlín XI, 2004, č. 2, pp. 33–35.
Petr Pelčák – Vladimír Šlapeta, Lubomír Šlapeta – Čestmír Šlapeta: Architekotnické dílo/Architectural work (exhibition catalogue), Muzeum umění Olomouc – Galerie architektury Brno 2003.
Tomáš Černoušek – Vladimír Šlapeta – Pavel Zatloukal, Olomoucká architektura 1900–1950. Průvodce, Olomouc 1981, pp. 62, 65–68.
