Attention to details: Adam Štěch’s architecture and design exhibition Elements opens in Vienna
Adam Štěch, the Czech art journalist and researcher, has now opened his exhibition Elements at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. Adam spoke to Radio Prague International about what awaits visitors to the exhibition, as well as his career, perspectives on art and design, and his love for modernism.
Your upcoming exhibition in Vienna is called Elements. Can you unpack that title for us? What can visitors expect at this exhibition when they come to see it?
"So, in my work, I'm interested in twentieth-century architecture, which has many movements and styles, and my biggest focus is the details of architecture.
"During that time, architecture was more interesting in terms of how architects were able to have all kinds of details made bespoke and custom for particular projects. So it means that, for example, in some houses you have handrails, doors, lamps or built-in furniture, and everything was designed especially for those houses. So those elements, those features of the houses are very unique and they exist just in one place in the world, in one specific house. That’s why I'm travelling to visit those houses all around the world to document these details, which you can't see anywhere else.
"So ‘Elements’ are these details. We have ten sections of details, starting from entrances, which means doors, handles, doorknobs, but also post boxes, doorbells and so on. Then we have a section of handrails, staircases; we have a section of built-in furniture; we have lighting, but we have fireplaces too. I have documented three hundred fireplaces in these houses. All these small details create the whole architecture, the whole house, so I'm documenting these individual details.
"At the exhibition in Vienna, you can see 2500 of these details – which is just a part of my collection, because we’re limited by the space at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. This exhibition was actually put on for the first time in Milan in April, and it was a little bit bigger than it will now be in Vienna."
And you say that you are documenting these details – these are documents from your own personal archives – but perhaps also inspiring people, who will come and see parts of houses, parts of their own homes with new eyes. You might be inspiring future design with this exhibition?
"For sure. This is one of my goals actually: to inspire a new generation of architects and designers. I am not really a scholar or an academic. I like to have academic knowledge, but to use it to educate people who are also not academics. One of my goals is to educate professionals, that is, designers and architects. I sometimes visit houses that are not so well known and built by little-known architects, mostly local architects, whether it's in Uruguay or in Belgium or wherever. Very few people in design and architecture know about them. So, I want to spread the information that modernism is not just Adolf Loos, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier or Frank Lloyd Wright, but rather it's thousands and thousands of other architects who deserve our attention.
And so when did you first become interested in interior design? What is it about interiors that caught your interest, as opposed to exteriors?
"For me, it's been a long journey towards my profession. When I was 16 or 17, I started to be interested in art – paintings, sculptures, everything artistic basically. Slowly, I started to focus more on architecture and design, because these really affect our daily lives, how we live, how we work, how we entertain ourselves, everything. So, I moved from fine art to applied art.
"Interiors, for me, are even more interesting because they are hidden. It's maybe just because of the prosaic reason that they are hidden. They are not seen by everybody. It's an adventure and it's a challenge to get into these interiors, to get the permission to take photos, to document them. So, maybe I just chose a more difficult way to gain my expertise. I'm not photographing just houses from the outside, which a lot of architectural photographers do. I chose this challenge of visiting interiors, which are, for me, even more important in architecture than exteriors. Interiors really build you as a person, because you spend a lot of time inside, at home or in public buildings."
There's an aspect of your work that I have to ask about, which is gaining access to these places. How does that work? Do you ever just knock on the door and say ‘Hello I'm a Czech interior-design historian. Can I come into your house, please?’
"Of course, I do this very often. I started to do it when I was 17 or 18, first in the Czech Republic, and then I began to travel a little bit. Many people, including very good friends from all around the world, would always ask me ‘How are you doing this? I would never ring the bell. I wouldn't go into some stranger's house.’ And I would say ‘Hey, what can I lose?’
"All of the money for the flights, the accommodation, all the trips, I'm paying it from my own resources. I never get any funding from an institution or anything like that. It’s quite important for me to bring material back from these trips. So, I have to try it, I have to ring on the bell. I should be polite, I should be well behaved, and I simply say ‘Hey, I'm super interested in your house’. In eighty percent of cases, people are very nice. They appreciate it, because they recognise that someone has come so far, maybe from another continent, to see their house.
"Sometimes I also feel pride from the owners; they can show their interesting house, which is not just a house – it's a story. There are always stories behind these houses. As I said, in most cases they are they are okay and they let me in. But this is just one method. I use many other ways to get into houses; I'm contacting architects, historians, even sending letters, because in most cases I know the address of the house, but I don't know who lives there. So I simply send an old-fashioned letter with my request, my email and my telephone. I have received many answers, and in most cases, positive answers."
Your particular focus and passion within the field of interior design and architecture is modernism. It's a big question, but what defines modernism, and what is it especially that you are looking for in these places?
"I would define modernism as a movement in art, architecture, design, but also in philosophy and as an approach to life.
"It was a movement from 1900 to, let's say, the 1970s. All of it was defined by the belief that the future brings something exciting, something better than what came before. It will bring a much better quality of life for everybody. The tool to achieve this was design and architecture. If you will build modern houses, which are hygienic, have enough light, no dirt, no damp corners (as it was in the nineteenth century), the quality of life will increase. So this was this belief of architects, that they really are building a better future for people.
"This is what fascinates me: that it's not just about architecture, design, beautiful and practical solutions for our lives, but it's this big ideology of believing in a better future. I think we should have this belief nowadays, that there will be better days. It will be better maybe not for us, because we are quite privileged people, but for the rest of our planet as well. So modernism is something much more than just architecture."
When you put it like that, modernism is so hopeful, and it's a forward-looking, futuristic way of life, so much more than architecture. What would you say though is the current perception of design and architecture from the modernist period? How have people reacted to it since the 1970s?
"Yeah, of course, in the 1960s and 70s, modernism went through a big crisis. It was criticised for its conception of urban planning and social housing. It didn't work as architects thought it would work. So, on the one hand, there were ideals and a hope in a better future, but on the other hand, a lot of those hopes failed. Of course, we have to look at it from a critical point of view today.
"The 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were a period of postmodernism, so basically the total opposite. Postmodernism was about going back to history and being inspired by Baroque or the Renaissance, like a kind of eclectic fun. Today, I think we have been, for maybe twenty years, living in a time of modernist nostalgia.
"A lot of people like me, a lot of observers and journalists who are connected to architecture, have started to write about modernism. After thirty or twenty years postmodernism, this interest in modernism has started to be big again. I am probably also a product of this idea of modernist nostalgia. Even though we know that there are some criticisms and failures of modernism, we kind of love it.
"It brings a part of our history back. For example, in the Czech Republic or in Czechoslovakia, modernism is connected with these very powerful personal stories – for example, Jewish architects in the 1930s who had to escape from Hitler. Some of them didn't succeed, so some architects died in the concentration camps. It was the same for their clients and the owners of the houses. Most of them were rich people with democratic ideals, and suddenly there was a war, and then there was a communist regime. Their villas were stolen from them. So there are really dramatic stories of the twentieth century behind the architecture itself.
"This is, I think, what attracts people to modernism and it's now very popular. In the Czech Republic or abroad, you can see a lot of houses that have been renovated and are maybe open to the public. We have Villa Volman [in Čelákovice, Central Bohemia] and also Villa Winternitz by Adolf Loos here in Prague. These were private houses, but their owners have decided to share their stories with the public.
"I think it's a good time to rethink modernism. This is also why I am creating my content; I want to stimulate the new generation, including my students. I teach them the history of architecture, so that they can have the background information to create something new. This will be a modernism for our time. Of course it will be different, because we have different needs and problems that we face as a society, but we can only learn from our predecessors."
ELEMENTS: Adam Štěch’s Perspective on Architectural Details is open at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna from the September 18th 2024 to the March 2nd 2025.
