Studio Valouch stays at FA

"I am interested in close contact with history, monuments, but also confrontation with modernist architecture and urbanism. Cultivation of an unfinished, injured environment, its revival and change. I don't have the answer to the topic but I want to look for them together with the students," explains Štěpán Valouch with his motivation for teaching at FA.

The semester in the studio Valouch begins with a set of conceptual considerations that do not seem to be related to the assignment. The aim is for the student to be confronted with a broader context and, if possible, to understand the topic in depth in a limited time. According to Valouch, a certain disorientation at the beginning does not have to be detrimental, and during the semester it can lead to the discovery of one's own opinion.

Together with Jan Stibral, an assistant professor in the studio, they plan to focus on current topics that have an impact on the face of the city or landscape. They will find inspiration at the edges and interfaces which offer freer access to the environment and less expected solutions.

In the upcoming semester, their assigment is a vacant lot in Jindřišská Street. The topic will be a meeting point of contemporary construction with history in the very center of Prague, the search for a construction program and the design of contemporary architecture. The results of the last semester, when they dealt with the phenomenon of the Holešovice market, will be presented in the publication Střechy nebe nekradou (The roofs do not steal the sky, CTU, 2020).

In June 2020, Štěpán Valouch, together with Jiří Opočenský (o-va), was nominated among the five finalists of the Architect of the Year 2020 award. "We are glad that we have an award-winning practioner in the team, and that Štěpán Valouch, despite the workload of his office, invests part of his time and energy in teaching at the faculty," adds Dalibor Hlaváček, head of the Department of Architectural Design II.

Ing. arch. Štěpán Valouch is a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in the studio of Alena Šrámková. Together with Jiří Opočenský, he founded the o-va architectural office. The studio has won a number of invited and public competitions. To mark the ten years of the office's existence, they published the book "ov-a 2007-2017". He is not a newcomer at the FA CTU in the role of a teacher, in the academic year 2012/2013 he led the ZAN studio of the first year.

Ing. arch. Jan Stibral graduated from studio of Jiří Suchomel at FUA TU in Liberec (2018), where he was behind the conception and production of the annual publication FUA 20 and the yearbook FUA 04: Report from the North. In 2014, he participated (Kolmo.eu) in the Czechoslovak exhibition "2x100 mil.m2" at the 14th Venice Biennale. He runs his own studio Avocado Fresh.