Šumperáky houses: retro-modernism wrapped in mystery
Šumperák is the nickname of a type of house built in Czechoslovakia mainly during the 1960s and 70s. Ostensibly modernist, even avant-garde, with its distinctive first storey angled roof and balcony, the story of the Šumperák is in fact far more layered and complicated than may originally appear.
You likely won’t find a Šumperák house anywhere in the centre of Prague, or anywhere in the centre of most major Czech cities. So I’ve had to travel out to the suburban district of Čakovice in northern Prague. Here, we find not one, but two of these unusual Šumperáky houses, which are both symbols of mid-twentieth century modernism on the one hand, with their distinctive first storey angled roofs; and also much more, because their authorship is a grey area and their symbolism is a grey area, too.
The house has just been sold according to the neighbours and is pretty much in pristine condition in terms of what they would have looked like in the 1960s or 70s when they were built. Now, if we just walk around the corner, we’ll find another one, which is different because it has been renovated, with a front porch built on to the outside, and also it has modern insulation on the façade…
“The Šumperák is really the essence of the misery of the socialist regime. Because you have the idea of a beautiful modern house, which basically has Western forms – this house is basically a copy of 1950s French, American and Brazilian houses. So it is kind of an essence of Western modernism packed into a DIY package.”
That was Adam Stěch, an architecture historian, journalist and curator, who documents examples of modern architecture around the world. His response underscores the complex love-hate, fascination-repulsion aspect associated with so-called Šumperáky houses. Estimates suggest around 20,000 were built across Czechoslovakia from the mid-sixties to the end of the 1980s. And all based on a do-it-yourself, build-it-yourself purchasable plan drafted by a man named Josef Vaněk.
He wasn’t an architect but a draughtsman-designer who had a basic education, and previously trained as a mason in the city of Zlín. By all accounts an ambitious, entrepreneurial man, he ended up working in the eastern Czech town of Šumperk.
Pepa Vomáčka has spent decades reporting on the history of Czech architecture. He takes us back the roots of the Šumperák:
“At the start of the 1950s, there was no real construction at all in Czechoslovakia. There was a post-war hysteria and there was no money. The first houses did not start being built until the end of the 1950s. Most people built houses without any kind of planning permission in their gardens, courtyards, and so on.”
Tomáš Pospěch is a photographer who chronicles every single possible Šumperák he can find. This has resulted in two books, with a third on the way:
“Josef Vaněk discovered that there was a big gap in the market. That there was no way for people to construct individual housing if they wanted to…so he decided he would draft ten plans and publish those in a book.”
Vaněk then devised the first plan for a “Family Home Type V” and began offering it to people who were visiting the building authority offices. This soon led to three houses being built according to his plans – the very first of which was commissioned by a lady in the eastern Bohemian municipality of Rapotín, right on the outskirts of the town of Šumperk, in Osvobození street.
Pospech contacted the lady, a Mrs Kocourková, as part of his research: “Mrs Kocourková is still with us and is a very active lady. And she claims that many of the features of these houses were the result of her input.”
It all sounds very individualistic and entrepreneurial – with restrictions against this type of conduct loosened during the liberalisation era of mid-60s Czechoslovakia. This in turn enabled small attempts at a revival of Czechoslovakia’s First Republic position as an architectural powerhouse.
Architecture historian Adam Štěch, again:
“The early 20th century is one of the best eras of Czech architecture. Historians say that Czechs had three main architectural eras – gothic, baroque and modernism of the 1920s and 1930s. The latter, the golden First Republic era saw the Czech Republic becoming a leader in new architecture.”
Then, of course, came the 1948 communist putsch, which put an end to modernism, to be replaced by Soviet-style so-called “social realism”.
But in the West, modernism continued unabated. In 1947, Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer – one of the key figures in modernist architecture – built something known as the Small Hillside House in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The futuristic design featured an angled mouth-like second floor, the likes of which undoubtedly served as the inspiration for Czech Šumperáky. Adam Štěch explains:
“And post-war modernism is much more fun and enjoyable in terms of shapes, which was partly as a result of new constructions techniques being developed and there were new technologies that opened up how to use concrete. So the shapes of post-war modernism are more organic and sculptural.”
In 1958, the Brussels World's Fair, Expo 58, became a key turning point, necessitating that communist Czechoslovakia present itself to the world as something more than a social realist factory. Czechoslovak architects František Cubr, Zdeněk Pokorný and Josef Hrubý created a groundbreaking design for a pavilion building – a circular, futuristic structure, again with a mouth-like orifice on a raised second storey. Adam Štěch again:
“And they were able to find the continuity again with the modern architecture. Because these architects had still been educated in the time of the great modern architecture era from the 1930s.”
A year later, the Šumperák began to come to life. Adam Štěch has researched the history in detail:
“At the end of the 50s there was an architect named Vladimír Kalivoda from Valašské Meziříčí. And he was one of the few architects at that time to build single family houses. This was a house type that basically vanished after the Second World War – because they were considered non-socialist; elitist; bourgeoisie. But there were some exceptions. And Vladimír Kalivoda built a few houses.”
The houses were in Litovel in eastern Bohemia, and had many features of what would become Šumperáky. Pepa Vomáčka explains:
“A total of three were built in this style. Designer Josef Vaněk, in the early 60s, spotted one of these buildings, and asked to see the plans. He made some adaptations and began selling these for 875 crowns – which was nothing even in those days.”
Avant-garde credentials aside, the houses were in fact designed to be cheap and easy to construct. Pepa Vomáčka again:
“Everyone had to build it themselves. Three people were enough labour. It took around two months to build, and the total material and labour costs were around 100-120,000 Czech crowns, which is remarkably cheap by today’s standards.”
Photographer and art historian Tomáš Pospěch found that terminal communist-era materials shortages had an effect on the assembly kit-like nature of Šumperáky:
“When I started my project investigating Šumperáky, I discovered that each house was notably different, and that the house was a great representation of a particular period between the 1960s and 70s. This was a time when all architects had to be employed and no one was allowed to be self-employed, and where no building companies existed which you could call up to build you a house, meaning that everyone built houses themselves, and when there was a permanent shortage of building materials, so people got very inventive.”
Meanwhile, debates have continued over the years about whether Josef Vaněk appropriated and adapted Vladimír Kalivoda’s original designs in a fully fair way. In any event, Vaněk’s zeal wasn’t entirely without consequences, as Adam Štěch recalled:
“He was even accused of entrepreneurship, i.e. ‘You are basically selling your ideas. It’s not allowed in our communist society!’ But, somehow he succeeded.”
Tomáš Pospěch has spoken to hundreds of people who constructed a Šumperák house:
“I know that Vaněk sold about 4,500 plans. Talking to people, about every fourth person bought a plan from him. Other probably copied it somehow or loaned out between themselves.”
After the 1968 Soviet invasion, came the infamous “normalisation” era. But modern architecture survived in Czechoslovakia, especially of the then ubiquitous brutalist variety. According to Pepa Vomáčka, the avant-garde Šumperák was never deemed dangerous to the authorities:
Šumperáky weren’t problematic to anyone. Only after the 90s did some people start seeing them as ugly. Of course people made custom changes to the colour or materials and so on, so the results weren’t always successful. But I do think the original design wasn’t bad.”
One myth was that Šumperáky were not problematic because they were built by and for communist functionaries. After all, who could afford to build a custom-made house in communist Czechoslovakia? But Tomáš Pospěch discovered this was not necessarily the case:
“During my interviews, I’d often hear that yes, Šumperáky were built by communists for themselves. But the research proved the opposite. Far fewer communists had Šumperák than existed among the population. On the other hand, they certainly were not built by those who did not go along with the regime. Instead, it tended to be people in small towns and villages.”
Craftsmen or handymen. Well-off people – factory bosses, butchers, those who operated certain state businesses, as Adam Štěch noted:
“I would say that these people were mostly high-ranking officials from JZD and these agricultural unions, or people in factories who had leading positions and so on.
Designer Josef Vaněk managed to get coverage of his ideas in contemporary newspapers and magazines, which helped considerably to improve sales. According to Tomáš Pospěch, Vaněk’s efforts were simply moulded to fit the current communist narrative:
“The Communist Party even boasted about this effort, citing it as an example of the modernisation of rural areas. His daughter says that he would come home and there’d be ten or twenty people waiting for him to buy a plan.”
Spotting a Šumperák today, they certainly appear modernist and funky. But are they actually practical places to live? Alas, as, Tomáš Pospěch noted, countless basic practical problems blight these buildings, with their 95cm thick front-facing balconies:
“This was ostensibly the most interesting element about the house. Most people built the house because of the balcony and concurrent windows. But when I interviewed people during photographing for my book, then I would hear, for example, someone say, ‘Oh, yes, since I stopped smoking, I haven’t stood out on that balcony for twenty years.’ And his wife replied to him, ‘That’s because you’re not the one who washes the windows.’ In fact those were the two main reasons to go there – to smoke or to wash the windows.”
Adam Štěch agreed that the designs are less than practical:
“You could say maybe turn the house 180 degrees to have the balcony facing the garden. But in most Šumperáky the balcony is at the front. And during really hot days the balcony has no really proper roof to create shade, so you really melted in the sun sitting on the balcony.”
Indeed, the reverse sides of Šumperáky are far less impressive – one might even call them ugly. So, there’s no choice but to face forward with little privacy and a near useless balcony. In any event, Šumperáky continue to be objects of curiosity well into in 21st century, even fetching high prices on the market.
But Adam Štěch is careful to place their increasingly iconic status in the proper context:
“What I don’t like about Šumperáky is not the shape. The shape is fun, because it is inspired by these houses from Western societies. What I don’t like is that it is celebrated as something super-original in the Czech context. People who are fans of Šumperáky celebrate how this is supposedly a really great Czech design, and it is not really true. I had this feeling that it is really a Jára Cimrman [a comical, entirely fictional, absurdist Czech hero] kind of architecture as it really depicts the ethos of Czechs somehow.”
Related
-
Pepa Vomáčka at 80 – Celebrating Prague’s Legendary “Pábitel”
Josef “Pepa” Vomáčka is a renowned and much-beloved figure across Prague’s cultural scene. Dominik Jůn spoke to his friends and associates to mark his 80th birthday.
-
New book celebrates iconic Communist-era family house
A new book, which has just been released by the PositiF publishing house, is mapping the phenomenon of the so-called Šumperák, probably the most famous family house design…
