Karel Kotas

Architect Karel Kotas came to Moravská Ostrava in the spring of 1925 as a construction supervisor during the construction of the New Town Hall. In addition to influencing the shape of this landmark, he soon began to participate in other projects related to the transformation of Ostrava's industrial neighborhood into an industrial metropolis. According to his designs, the Moravskoostravská spořitelna, now the town hall building in the central part of the city, was built in the center, as well as the headquarters of the insurance company Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta on the corner of Zámecká and Puchmajerova Streets, the headquarters of the tennis club, the Brouk and Babka department store on Smetana Square, the Civic Savings Palace in Reální Street, Dělnické zálazna residential buildings in Veleslavínova Street or the Melantrich Palace on the corner of Umělecká and Nádražní Streets. He also designed the eye pavilion of the city hospital or the prayer room of the Methodist church. At the end of the 1930s, the palace of the General Directorate of the Northern Railway of Ferdinand with its remarkable artistic decoration on Prokešov náměstí and the neighboring apartment building were added to it. In his projects, Kotas combined a feeling for expediency with an emphasis on material composition, color and refined material and spatial composition. He used forms of new classicism and purism, enriched with functionalist principles with regard to the given environment. He paid attention to modern Italian architecture, followed the work of Le Corbusier and other representatives of the artistic and architectural life of the time. He collaborated with artists, devoted himself to association activities. In addition to Moravian Ostrava, he participated in shaping modern Brno, Prague or the Teplice nad Bečvou spa. The monograph of Kotas's life's work, published this year, discusses all these stages of his work. The introductory lecture by one of the volume's editors will focus primarily on Kotas's Ostrava plans and realizations in the context of the architectural development of the 1920s and 1930s.