The extensive set of town houses, which is extremely valuable in urbanistic terms, represents the largest municipal building enterprise of the municipality of Lipník in the interwar period. The bold building programme, which included spaces for housing, shops, offices, and services (a post office, savings bank, and funeral parlour) dictated a complex layout and almost full development of the plot. Nevertheless, the block does not look oversized thanks to the ingenious shaping of its mass and the articulation of the façades.
In spite of the ongoing economic crisis and rising unemployment, the municipality of Lipník embarked on this ambitious construction project with the intention of providing representative facilities for the authorities, creating new business premises, and providing modern apartments for military guards, but also giving employment opportunities to local workers and tradesmen who were barely able to find orders. The project was entrusted to the Brno architect Bohumír F. A. Čermák. The closely monitored and ultimately politicised project was dogged by controversies, conflicts, and even court proceedings, both because of the adequacy of the construction programme and (especially) because of the budget and the tender for the construction contractor, when a Brno company was chosen instead of local firms; even the competence of the architect himself was questioned. František Wawerka, a factory owner and the building officer of the municipality, who was extremely well-versed in the field of architecture, also contributed to calming down the heated discussion by defending Čermák, as evidenced by his own villa by the Oehler husband-and-wife duo from the late 1930s, considered to be the most brilliant realisation in interwar Lipník.
A slightly sloping corner plot with a conical shape, bounded by Novosady and 28. října Streets on the edge of the townʼs historic core, in the vicinity of St. Josephʼs Chapel, was designated for a set of three multi-purpose buildings. The imposing complex was thus intended to be in contact with the small-scale terraced housing of the town houses and in confrontation with the solitary early Baroque chapel, but it also figured as a point-de-vue of the important long-distance roads that converged in the open space in front of it and around which the new “big city” development was supposed to take place.
In the southern and western parts of the ensemble, the architect responded to the situation by the irregular subtraction and addition of mass, as well as by dynamic, almost expressive bending and curving of the plan, following the curve of the street, in order to avoid this six-storey buildingbeing on an overly monumental scale. The chosen approach of “sweeping” shaping of the volume reminds one of the projects of Čermákʼs Brno colleague Ernst Wiesner, especially the Morava Palace in Brno (1926–1933) and the later Post and Telegraph Office in Šumperk (1935–1937). However, the reduction and wrapping of the mass did not possess only an aesthetic and urbanistic justification; it was, above all, functional, as it enabled better illumination of the interiors. By contrast, the northern façade on 28. října Street, which followed the historic buildings, strictly followed the straight line of the street and did not indulge in any dramatic plasticity; the expression was carried by flat plate-glass windows and vertical glass strips illuminating the premises of the post office, which was entered from there. The entrance to the savings bank was oriented to the corner, while the entrances to the funeral parlour and the flats were located on the southern façade, with two groups of loggias at the level of the residential floors, two garages, and a passage to the courtyard. Thanks to this efficient layout and the separate entrances, the individual operations did not interfere with each other.
Buildings with reinforced concrete masonry frames were clad with a simple smooth plaster of quartzite, which was supplemented only in places (in the Savings Bank section) by brick strip cladding and in the vicinity of the post office section by a shallow inconspicuous “framing” of glass strips, which followed the neighbouring historic house in their height. The main role in the “ornamentation” of the façade was played by windows of various sizes and articulations and their distinctive crimson red colouring, which was also applied to the framing of the shop windows and the doors and gates on the ground floor.
The building has been listed since 1997 and has remained unchanged in its basic layout. We are pleased to see the recent restoration of the ground floor, which, in addition to new glazing, milk glass fillings, and the return of the red colouring of the frames, stands out with subtle inscriptions in an almost authentic typographic treatment.
AW (translation by SG)
Selected literature
Lubor Lacina, Akad. arch. inž. Bohumír F. A. Čermák, Architektura ČSR 21, 1962, č. 1, p. 42.
Bohumír Čermák, Nový Lipník nad Bečvou, in: Karel Žůrek, Lipník nad Bečvou, město a okres, Lipník nad Bečvou 1933, pp. 107–108.
Sources
pošta - Památkový Katalog (pamatkovykatalog.cz)
Martina Straková, Dílo architekta Bohumíra Čermáka. 1882–1961 (diploma thesis), Seminář dějin umění FF MUNI, Brno 2002.
Daniela Kaňáková, Architektura a urbanismus Lipníku nad Bečvou v letech 1900–1950 (diploma thesis), Katedra dějin umění FFUP, Olomouc 2011.
