Date: 16.02.2012
Beginning: 18:00

Life under the so-called Normalization could be described by compromise and frustration resulting from unfulfilled expectations. The artist Barbora Klímová focuses on paradoxes present in building family housing projects during the era that has idolized collective living. The theoretician of architecture Michaela Janečková studies the history of panel housing estates (panelákové sídliště). In their presentation, both introduce a number of compromise solutions in individual and collective housing. The lecture looks awry at the history of architecture because it focuses not on success or failure but instead on what results from necessary half measures. At the same time, it explores the in between space  where scientific method meets the artistic one.

Barbora Klímová is an artist and a winner of the 2006 Jindřich Chalupecky Award. Last she year she published a book We Have Lived This Project (Prague: Zlatý řez, 2011) on the building of family houses under Normalization. Personal memories of architects and owners are accompanied by a text by the sociologist Barbora Vacková.

Michaela Janečková is doctorate student of Theory and History of Art at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She works for the Center for Central European Architecture and has contributed to the book Husákovo 3+1 Housing Culture in the 1970s in Czechoslovakia (Praha: VŠUP, 2007).