Václav Havel and architecture: Brno exhibition reveals a lesser-known side of the Czech president
Václav Havel would have turned 90 this October. A new exhibition at Villa Stiassni in Brno looks beyond his familiar roles as playwright, dissident and president to explore his relationship with architecture.
A family of builders
But Havel grew up in a family in which building and architecture had played an important role for generations. The new exhibition Havlova architektura, or Havel’s Architecture, at Villa Stiassni in Brno starts with those family roots. Its curator, Vlasta Loutocká, says Havel’s interest in architecture is much less surprising when seen in that context.
“His relationship with architecture was, let’s say, a very close one, because generations of his ancestors, his great-grandfather and his father, were essentially builders and, to some extent, architects as well. His great-grandfather built the Lucerna Palace in Prague, which was initially Art Nouveau in style and then, with its reinforced-concrete structure, was already moving slightly towards modernism, making it a kind of architecture ahead of its time.
“And Václav Havel’s father, Václav Maria Havel, was a great builder, if we can call him that, because he developed an entire residential district in Prague, the Barrandov district, and was responsible for the creation of a magnificent swimming complex in Prague, connected with restaurants and an observation tower – the Barrandov Terraces.”
The younger Václav Maria Havel looked abroad for inspiration. During a visit to the United States, he was impressed by leafy residential neighbourhoods – an experience that helped shape his plans for Barrandov.
“This whole idea came about when Václav Maria Havel was staying in America and was fascinated by the green residential neighbourhoods there. And the Barrandov Terraces were inspired by the luxurious Cliff House restaurant in San Francisco, which stands on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.” Back in Prague, he selected a suitably dramatic location above the Vltava River.
“Václav Havel found a very special, enchanting, even romantic place on a promontory above the Vltava River. It was the site of a former quarry, and a swimming pool was built at the bottom of the quarry. On the terraces above the pool, restaurants were built, later a bar, and also the fifteen-metre observation tower.”
Bringing life back to Prague Castle
Václav Havel chose a very different career. Yet after the fall of communism in 1989, architecture suddenly became part of his public role as president. One of his ambitions was to transform Prague Castle from what many Czechs saw as a remote seat of political power into a place that was more open to the public and once again connected with contemporary culture. Vlasta Loutocká says he may have been looking much further back into Czech history for inspiration – to the cosmopolitan court of Emperor Rudolf II around 1600.
“Václav Havel had this idea, perhaps inspired by the court of Emperor Rudolf II, who ruled in Prague and enriched the city with works of art and with a kind of artistic and scientific life. Václav Havel wanted Prague Castle to resemble that kind of court.”
Havel invited leading contemporary architects and designers to work at the Castle. Eva Jiřičná designed the modern glass Orangery in the Royal Garden, while Josef Pleskot was responsible for a series of interventions opening previously inaccessible areas. One of the most distinctive was the passage through the Deer Moat beneath the Powder Bridge.
“Among the prominent architects Václav Havel worked with, I would mention Eva Jiřičná, who created a greenhouse, a special greenhouse in the gardens of Prague Castle – the Orangery. I would also mention Josef Pleskot, who translated the idea of connecting the Castle with the surrounding city into the construction of a tunnel beneath the Powder Bridge.
“It is a very unusual structure, highly regarded architecturally, made of fired brick, with a narrow wooden walkway along the bottom of the tunnel. Václav Havel conceived it as narrow so that people meeting there would be able to establish closer contact. And the tunnel is made even more distinctive by the Brusnice stream, which flows through it.”
Havel and his paradoxes
The exhibition also recalls Havel’s collaboration with other major figures in Czech architecture and design, including Bořek Šípek, who created interiors and objects for the presidential office. But for Vlasta Loutocká, Havel’s involvement with architecture also reflects something broader about his personality. A man whose professional world had been literature, theatre and philosophy found himself in a position where ideas could take physical form – in buildings, gardens and public spaces.
She points to Havel’s own fascination with the contradictions that accompanied him throughout his life. “I might use his own words, when he says that his life was full of paradoxes. Paradoxes that frightened him, that he constantly encountered, that kept emerging from somewhere, but when he thought about it, deep down he felt that he actually enjoyed a life full of paradoxes. So perhaps it is precisely those paradoxes, and also his relationship with architecture – because by inclination he was really a philosopher and a writer – that I would highlight from the exhibition.”
Havlova architektura is on display at Villa Stiassni in Brno until the end of December 2026.
