Following Vlado Milunić

* 3. 3. 1941 Zagreb — 17. 9. 2022 Prague

They asked me to dig through the fragments of my own memory and find a recollection of Vlado from his student days: the Milunić siblings – Vlado and his younger sister Neva – stood out in the large anonymous crowd of students starting at the Faculty of Civil Engineering in 1960, not only because of their southern accent, but mainly because they were not afraid to ask curious questions in front of the large lecture hall, while the rest of us tried to be as inconspicuous as possible...

It was only later (in the 3rd year), when presenting his first project at the architecture course, that Vlado aroused the great dislike of the then dean Stašek with his project of a family house... The dark perspectives of "Mies-like" simplicity with the abstract expression of large glazed areas caused a great debate at the school, which was hardly discussed from the sorely; expulsion was threatened...! The debate was joined by the younger cantors, who defended the stubborn student. Vlado did not budge an inch, refused to redo the project, and in the end was not expelled from the school. His absolute intransigence, unusual at the time, remained even later....

The group VČELKA (BEE) had its origins in later years, when the popularity of BEATLES reached the part of EUROPE behind the Iron Curtain... program declarations were not worn then, but the emphasis on black and white graphics of our hatched projects made us significantly different from the others... Vlado also had an undeniable merit in the fact that our foursome created a small closed sect, which others would like to join...

Let me quote our classmate Radim Boháček, who lives in Canada: 'In our year a group called Včelička was formed, consisting of the students Milunič, Šlégr, Zavřel and Hnát. The name of the group was a reference to the immense diligence with which they hatched their drawings, inspired by the then shining British group Archigram, so the measure of success was the number of hatches per square millimetre."

Apart from vague memories, a few curious photographs have survived, but God knows where our peculiar projects from the department of "industry" end?

After graduating in 1966, our paths quickly diverged....

Zdeněk Zavřel

The son of Croatian emigrants, he studied architecture at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague between 1960 and 1966. After an internship in the Paris office of Jean Semichon, who was then working on the design of the La Villette slaughterhouse market, in 1969 he began a long-lasting collaboration with architect Jan Línk (*1943) with a competition proposal for a cultural centre in Gentoffe, Denmark, with whom he also designed three cooperative apartment buildings in 1970, built by 1978 in Prague's Barrandov.

Since 1971, they have systematically worked on projects of building complexes, integrated into Prague's housing estates and combining different types of housing for the elderly: in Bohnice (construction 1975–1982), in Malešice (1974–1985), in Chodov (1983–1989) and in Háje (1983–1993), which today have a total of more than two thousand inhabitants. The category of social buildings from this period also includes the nurses' quarters in Prague-Střížkov (1977–1985) and the pioneer camp (now the Cihelna camp) in Radětice near Bechyně (1978–1981). However, they also gained attention at that time

Línka's and Milunić's unexecuted competition designs for the botanical garden in Prague-Troja (1970), for the pavilions of the zoological garden there (1974), the design of the "House at the Intersection" for the Japanese magazine Shinkenchiku's show of residential building designs (1976), and the project of economical terrace houses in Prague-Lipnice (1978). Milunić left Studio 4 of the Design Institute of the Prague City Construction Company, and thus his collaboration with Jan Línek, in 1990. In the same year, the two architects independently designed a corner house for a gap in the Rašín embankment, adjacent to the Havel family house: it was only two years later that Milunić chose Frank O. Gehry for further cooperation. Their "Dancing House" was completed in 1996 and is today a symbol of this historical stage, but Milunić's "flowering" house – the design for the headquarters of the Středočeská plynárenská company in Pankrác (1997) – could have become one too. In the early 1990s, for his studio Ateliér V. M. (Volné Myšlenky - Free Thoughts), he adapted the space of the former cabaret in the palace of the Hrzáns of Harasov at 12 Celetná Street and subsequently created other Prague cultural spaces: next to the music club Radost FX in Bělehradská Street (1991–1992) and, above all, the reconstruction of the House at the Golden Ring for the Prague City Gallery and Literary Café (1995–1997). The key contemporary theme of the completion ("implosion") of prefabricated housing estates was materialized by Milunić's eleven houses of the Hvězda complex (1992–1999), connected to Prague's Petřiny housing estate and newly using the building of the local factory for laboratory instruments, and later also by similar, unexecuted competition projects for the Malešice housing estate (1999–2003) and Slovany in Bratislava (2006).

He collaborated with Petr Franta on the apartment buildings of the so-called Czech Quarter in Shanghai (2002–2005). Among his private commissions are a semi-detached house in Prague's Břevnov district for the art historian Jiří Kuthan (1991–1993) and the family house of František Hnojna in Plana nad Lužnicí (1999–2006). At the same time, however, Milunić continues to develop his typology of social buildings: he designed a day-care centre for handicapped children in České Budějovice – Čtyři Dvore (1990–1993) and the House for Children and Youth in Modřany (2000–2005), which he also provided with his favourite observation tower. The project of the relay tower and observation tower at Vidoula (2002) was not implemented, while another tower, carrying the red and white radar dome of the Ruzyně airport (2007), became the architect's last project. In his characteristic cardboard models remained his design of the Pálava winery Sonberk (2004), multifunctional houses in Opava (2005) or Bruntál (2006), the reconstruction of the theatre in Jeseník (2010), footbridges over the Jelení ditch (2011) and to Střelecký ostrov (2013) or the Elbe wharf in Hřensko (2018).

Lukáš Beran