Rozzol Melara

brutalist housing estate Trieste

Rozzol Melara, a brutalist housing estate inspired by Corbusier

8th August 2019

By greyscape

brutalist housing trieste italy

Brutalism in Italy

9th August 2019

By greyscape

@Barbican_City_of_London

When Prague lawyer JUDr. Josef Winternitz commissi

When Prague lawyer JUDr. Josef Winternitz commissioned Adolf Loos and Karel Lhota to design and build Villa Winternitz in 1931 he will have been aware of the threatening extremes off European politics but could not have imagined the manner in which his family would be driven from their home. Nor the battle to return the villa to its owners.

Josef did not survive to see the villa recognised as one of the most important interwar years homes in Prague and Loos’ last project, completed in a year with construction overseen by Karel Lhota.

On 15th March 1939, Hitler’s troops marched into Prague, making life for the city’s Jewish population terrifying and dangerous. Josef and his wife Jenny and their children Suzana and Petr were forcibly evicted in 1941, their home confiscated and transferred to the Emigration Fund for Bohemia and Moravia an officially organized looting operation. The villa became the property of the city. The family remained elsewhere in Prague until 1943 when they were sent to Theresienstadt and then on to Auschwitz.

Josef and Petr didn’t survive, Jenny and Suzana did. Liberated they returned to Prague. Penniless, mother and daughter technically reclaimed their home in 1948 only to be landed with ‘inheritance and millionaire tax’, ‘payment of which was conditional on the return of the villa’. The state knew that refugees would never be able to raise the funds; now they were liable for ‘discovered costs’. Jenny and Suzana pawns in a situation. The deal agreed in 1956 left the state in control of the Villa ‘in return for the cancellation of foreclosures and other claims arising from the fight to return the property’. The local municipality repurposed the villa as a kindergarten.The communist system ensured that they could never reclaim their home. Jenny died before the collapse of communism.

In 1997 after years of litigation between the family and the municipality the villa returned to the family. Their grandson Stanislav Cysar and other family members came together in 1999 to restore it to former glory. Anyone who has looked at property restitution will know this is a rare outcome across Europe. Image Villa Winternitz ©

Instagram post 18034703087363737

Instagram post 18034703087363737

Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens captured on camera as

Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens captured on camera as he walked away from the newly unveiled Cenotaph on November 11 1920. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and built by Lutyens, Holland, Hannen & Cubbit from Portland stone. The Cenotaph sits on the site of a temporary wooden and plaster memorial created in under two weeks, in the middle of a busy thoroughfare in Whitehall, for a 1919 Peace Day Parade. Public opinion and the press demanded that the memorial become permanent and Prime Minister David Lloyd George commissioned Lutyens to create a permanent structure. Lloyd George favored the creation of something similar to the L'Arc de Triumph, instead Lutyens proposed something closer to the temporary structure already in place, a cenotaph, Greek for an empty tomb. The discussion that ensued also considered location and some wanted it changed. Ultimately Lutyens original vision was realized. He waived his original fees and the first set of flags now sit in London's Imperial War Museum. On November 11th 1920 King George V unveiled the memorial and the tomb for the Unknown Soldier. Contributing to the book 'A hundred places that made Britain' Professor Mark Connolly chose The Cenotaph he commented "Lutyens made something so simple so that it means anyone can project their own ideas and feelings on to it. Deliberately, it has no overt religious symbolism. It just has the words 'The Glorious Dead' on it, and merely hints at a concept of eternal life. However, to make sure no offence was committed, the inscription on the tomb was checked with religious leaders throughout Britain’s empire".

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