Building a Sokol Hall (ʻSokolovnaʼ) was one of the favourite tasks of the architect Alois Pilc. As a member of the Sokol movement who knew well the needs of physical education and the operation of gymnasiums, he became a sought-after designer in Central Moravia. The Sokolovna in Kojetín was one of his most magnificent works. It was highly acclaimed in the press of the time, where, among others, the author himself commented on it.
In the year of the realisation of the Sokolovna in Lipník nad Bečvou, Pilc continued in parallel with the project of his second Sokolovna, in Kojetin. The people of Kojetín established a cooperative for the construction of a Sokolovna after the end of the First World War and in 1921 they bought a plot of land near the railway station. Desiring a representative building, they first approached the Prague architect František Krásný, the “court architect” of the Sokol movement, but his plan was not implemented because of the high budget. In 1926, the organisation announced a limited competition in which sixteen candidates participated. After “travelling to various Sokol Halls” and after studying the manual “On the construction of Sokol Halls and playing fields”, the management of the association recognised the winning design of the architect Alois Pilc from Přerov. This realisation marked the beginning of his promising career as an “architect of Sokol buildings”.
Pilc created a one-storey building with an asymmetrical oblong ground plan. He roofed the main hall with a classical gable roof, with various blocks of buttresses adjoining the volume of the gymnasium from the outside, this time with a flat ceiling, and often used as galleries or terraces. The location of the main gymnasium is revealed by continuous rows of windows. The dominant horizontality of the building is underlined by sculptural cornices that encompass its entire volume or parts of it. The author used them to evoke the modern spirit of the building, although most of the compositional elements, especially the window openings, are still dominated by the traditional vertical principle. The architect enhanced the contrast in the original design, which is now no longer preserved, by the colour of the plaster – dark and rough on the ground floor, light and smooth on the first floor. The architect situated the entrance to the Sokolovna building facing towards the square. The heart of the interior is a large gymnasium with a stage, surrounded by service rooms and changing rooms. Construction began in 1927 and it was opened to the public on 5 August in the following year. The ceremonial unveiling of the statue of a girl gymnast (ʻSokolkaʼ) by the sculptor Julius Pelikán took place in 1932.
Pilc reflected on his project in his first-ever published article, from 3 September 1928 in the newspaper Kojetínské hlasy. It introduced the readers to its development from “conceptual sketches”, via their victory in the architectural competition, to the actual implementation. Pilc comments on his struggle with the ideal solution: “...the façade from the square with unequal floor heights made a lot of work for me, and so I ran away from the drawing board many times.” The architect first sketched the perspective and internal views, and came in person to inspect the progress of construction, “curious to see how the building would turn out in terms of its internal conditions and in the masses of the view”. An important aspect for him was that the project should be “fit for all possible purposes, practical and inexpensive”, which was also one of the conditions of the competition. As a member of Sokol Pilc had a feeling of properly belonging to the association in an ideological sense; we read, for example, that he created “our common work”. He endeavoured to promote the most modern architectural trends in the small town. He managed to convince the people of Kojetín, as evidenced by his words:“If, at first, some did not like the solution of several flat roofs – perhaps because of the unusual nature of the site, I became convinced that their perhaps slight misgivings disappeared once the building was completed in solid masonry.” Aware of the multifunctional nature of the building, he leaves it “to serve the public” in the belief that “it will surely be the centre of culture of the town and its surroundings”. The generally positive reception of the architecture is evidenced by numerous remarks in the press, which did not hesitate to use words such as “graceful”, “imposing”, and “dignified” and statements such as: “Just as the Sokolovna is a purposefully designed building on the inside, it also stands out on the outside with its calm and pleasant exterior.” With this project Pilc first introduced a bolder modern morphology into the relatively conservative taste of Kojetín, in line partly with individualistic modernism and partly with a purifying aesthetic influenced in its overall expression by Dutch architecture.
In 2004 the Sokolovna underwent a utilitarian reconstruction. Repairs that were made in 2018-2019 brought it back closer to its original interwar appearance. The main intention of the sensitively executed project by Ing. Pavel Krampla was the overall revitalisation of the House of Culture and the adjacent surroundings. The designerʼs main aim was to avoid modern building systems and visual materials. For cultural events the Sokolovna received new theatre technology and equipment for the hall. The building continues to serve the town as a cultural centre, while a part of the Sokolovna is still used for sports purposes by the local gymnastic union.
IM (translation by SG)
Selected Literature
Sokolské slavnosti v Kojetíně, Kojetínské hlasy 1928, 3. 8., p. 1.
Kříž M., O stavbě sokolovny v Kojetíně, Kojetínské hlasy 1928, 3. 8., p. 3.
Nová sokolovna v Kojetíně, Obzor 1928, č. 178, 5. 8., p. 1.
Ferd. Venclík, Tělocvičná jednota Sokol v Kojetíně, in: Josef Kovařík – Jan Kratoň – Bedřich Jelínek (eds.), Přerov: Přerovsko-Kojetínsko, Brno 1933, pp. 18–19.
Alois Pilc, Nová sokolovna v Kojetíně, Kojetínské hlasy II, 3. 9. 1928, p. 6.
Rostislav Švácha (ed.), Naprej!: česká sportovní architektura 1567-2012, Praha 2012, p. 14.
Sources
Ivana Láníková (Málková), Architekt Alois Pilc a Přerov. Architektonická centra a periferie (masterʼs degree thesis), Katedra dějin umění FFUP, Olomouc 2018.
Ivana Láníková, Sokolovna jako fenomén Gesamkunstwerku, in: Zprávy památkové péče 77/2017/4, pp. 442-450.
Martina Horáčková, Architektura střední Moravy, 1918–1945: Přerov, Kroměříž, Bystřice pod Hostýnem, Holešov, Kojetín (diploma thesis), Katedra teorie a dějin výtvarných umění FFUP, Olomouc 2004.
Museum of Art in Olomouc, A 1504–1518. Photographs of plan and completed buildings as a contemporary presentation of the work of the builder Alois Pilc.
SOkA Přerov, Pamětní kniha Kojetína, p. 121.
Petra Poláková-Uvírová, Kojetínské sokolovně se navrací původní vzhled z první republiky, Přerovský deník cz, 21.3.2019. Available online:
https://prerovsky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/kojetinske-sokolovne-se-vraci-puvodni-vzhled-z-prvni-republiky-20190320.html (retrieved on 21.10.2023).
Podrobný popis rekonstrukce sokolovny z let 2018-2019. Available online:
http://www.technis.kojetin.cz/rekonstrukce-2018-2019 (retrieved on 5.1.2024)
http://www.technis.kojetin.cz/file.php?nid=15079&oid=7230271 (retrieved on 5.1.2024)
Pavel Michalec, Bývalá sokolovna Kojetín. Available online:
https://www.sokolskepamatky.eu/objekty/detail/byvala-sokolovna-kojetin (retrieved on 5.1.2024)
