Improvizace The architecture of the eighties

The construction industry in normalization Czechoslovakia did not offer a wide range of possibilities for the full development of architects' ideas. Although the experimental breath of the 1960s brought a number of innovations, many of which made it into everyday practice, the preference for quantity over quality and the increasingly desperate economic situation led to a general lack and limited space for creative work. The discrepancy between the ambitions of the creators and the real possibilities of the construction industry came to a head in the 1980s. Although there was a narrow group of buildings which, by the nature of their brief or thanks to a prominent investor, were guaranteed individual attention, almost unlimited budgets, and even foreign supply, for all the others the creators and contractors often had to improvise at considerable personal effort and risk. If the architect wanted to assert his authorial idea in the ailing economy and the timelessness of normalization, creative transformation of everything available and bending the rules became his daily bread. He looked for loopholes in otherwise rather rigid prefabricated structural or façade systems (see the text Skeleton), modified or fitted available standard elements into unusual positions (see the texts Transfers, Ceramics), added interesting additions in the form of loggias, portals, awnings to mostly drab buildings (see the text Steel), involved the public and artists in projects and realisations (see the text Playground), persuaded manufacturers, collaborators and research institutes to undertake unique experiments (see the text Computers) or the famous domestic "high-tech on your knee" (see the text Transfers) and, last but not least, sought at least a partial return of handmade, artisanal details and a more human scale (see the text Bricks and Wood). All this against a backdrop of ubiquitous, society-wide improvisation and profligacy (see the texts The Culture of Counter-Service and I Build, You Build, We Build).