The project examined the unique international training of the Czech interwar architect Vladimír Karfík (1901–1996). In the second half of the 1920s, he had the extraordinary opportunity to work in Le Corbusier's Paris atelier, spend almost a year practising at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, and gain experience in Chicago architectural offices specialising in the design of 1920s skyscrapers.
This international formation played a decisive role in shaping Karfík's architectural thinking, his conception of modern housing, and ultimately his later position as head of the architectural department of the Baťa company after his return to Czechoslovakia in 1930. At the progressive Baťa shoe company in Zlín, Karfík designed a wide range of buildings for both the rapidly expanding company town and Baťa's international projects.
Janáč's research relied on a critical comparison of Karfík's memoirs and archival material preserved in his Czech estate with extensive investigations undertaken in Paris, Chicago, and New York. He worked in the archives of the Fondation Le Corbusier, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago History Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, systematically verifying and clarifying the extent of Karfík’s actual involvement in projects produced by these studios.
While Karfík's contribution to selected Corbusian projects can be directly documented, it was his work at Taliesin – particularly the production of complex perspective drawings and presentation graphics for Wright's ambitious, largely unbuilt schemes of the late 1920s – that left the clearest archival traces. The discovery of matching drawings in Czech and American archives and in related literature confirms the authenticity and significance of his foreign experience. By contrast, his work in the Chicago offices is more difficult to reconstruct due to the anonymous and collaborative nature of large drafting teams.
In his lecture in Prague, Janáč demonstrated how these findings refine the understanding of Karfík's early professional trajectory and shed new light on the architectural logic of his later work in Baťa's Zlín. In particular, he examined Karfík's self-designed house (1935), which served as a direct means of showcasing his professional skills. This villa reflects a synthesis of Baťa's rationalised, modular building system, American modernist influences, and elements drawn from both Wright and Le Corbusier. Its horizontal composition, dynamic volumetric articulation, and distinctive corner window articulate a close dialogue between interior and exterior spaces.
Details such as sash windows, a covered veranda, and a centrally placed hearth indicate American influences. The spatial organisation responds to the sloping terrain, hierarchises domestic zones, and resonates with Wright's concept of "Usonian houses." The interior further emphasises notions of domestic comfort characteristic of Anglo-American housing culture, distinguishing Karfík from the more austere functionalism of many of his Czech contemporaries.
Karfík's residential architecture in Zlín – notably his own house – stands as an emblematic synthesis of Czechoslovak rationalist functionalism and American modernist ideas, carefully adapted to the social and technical context of Baťa's Zlín. It is also a significant example of contemporary Americanism, reflecting the fascination with U.S. models that permeated Czech and European society through art, architecture, and popular culture.
The workshop brought together scholars from The Courtauld Institute of Art, the University of Augsburg, and leading Czech researchers from the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, offering a valuable platform for discussing methodology and the broader context of modern architectural history.
