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The Central Library of Brno University of Technology in Brno (BUT) in the Czech Republic runs an e-learning course for first year students providing them with the basic information needed to improve their information literacy. The content of the course has changed by the installation of the web scale discovery Primo. Students are now briefed to use Primo for searching all the information content available on BUT. Because there is no further need to have individual chapters devoted to library catalogue and databases, it gives space to new issues that should be included in the information literacy course (e. g. presentation of information). With the new run of the course this semester we did the usability study of Primo that informed us about other changes that should be done.

In 1939, due to WWII and the Nuremberg Laws, the revolutionary Czech structural engineer Jaroslav J. Polívka arrived in the United States. After his arrival, he started a research job at UC Berkeley, renewed his engineering practice, and offered his services to the US military as many businesspersons did during this era. Polívka worked for Henry Kaiser who turned Richmond, CA, into a vibrant, fast developing workers city. New residential districts, hospitals, hangars, docks, and warehouses were built there. Henry Kaiser approached the structural development of the city in the same way he revolutionized the construction of battleships: from prefabricated, standardized parts. He supported research and development of new technologies. Mobile, round-shaped hospitals from prefabricated aluminum frames were one of the results of that research. In 1946, Jaroslav J. Polívka introduced himself to the “starchitect” Frank Lloyd Wright. A productive mutual co-operation that lasted 13 years and resulted in eight spectacular projects had started and Polívka, who had been working on extensive research both at UC Berkeley and Stanford University, came up with many technological, structural, and material innovations over the period. In 1957, Henry Kaiser funded the construction of one of the two geodesic domes designed by Richard Buckminster Fuller in Hawaii and in the process he invited Frank Lloyd Wright to consult the project. Jaroslav J. Polívka was probably in direct contact with Fuller, since he wanted to include him in his unfinished project of an encyclopedia of the world-famous structural engineers. On this particular story and a social matrix evolving around Henry Kaiser and Frank Lloyd Wright, the lecture seeks to rethink architectural global modernism as a cooperative project rather than a series of individual innovations manifested by isolated genius figures.

In 1931, the Vienna publishing house Anton Schroll & Co. published Heinrich Kulka’s extensive monograph on Adolf Loos. In his text, Kulka discussed Loos’s idea of being an architect, he wrote about ornament and the reduction of ornament, and then, on about one page, he outlined Loos’s space concept, which he named “raumplan”. He emphasized a better organization and rationalization of interior space as Loos’s main innovation. However, when we look at Loos’s 1920s and 1930s houses, they boast of a huge waste of space (and money). After Loos’s death in 1933, many of his apprentices continued designing “in the Loos manner”, as Heinrich Kulka promoted his projects from the mid-1930s. At the same time, we can see that the apprentices‘ projects do not achieve Loos’s spatial qualities and proportions and their works had been contaminated with other inventions of architectural avant-garde. What was the real purpose of the invention and use of the term “raumplan“ by Loos’s pupils and has there been anything like that after Loos’s death? The lecture will try to answer this question using examples of post-Loos works by Heinrich Kulka and Kurt Unger from 1933 to 1939.

Art historian Ladislav Zikmund-Lender will discuss qriting and performing queer art history in Central European context, providing insight into how the history of queer lives and experiences is being documented and presented in the Czech Republic. His talk will compare and contrast the ways that the path to queer emancipation in Central Europe has been distinct from the United States.

In autumn 2019, the Czech Republic celebrated the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, which ended four decades of communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia. New freedoms have made it easier for LGBTQ people to live their lives more openly in this Central European country, yet they still face significant challenges. Established in 2014, the Society for Queer Memory is the first Czech queer archives and museum. It now holds more than 1,000 objects. Art historian Ladislav Zikmund-Lender will discuss the work of the organization, providing insight into how the history of queer lives and experiences is being documented and presented in the Czech Republic. His talk will compare and contrast the ways that the path to queer emancipation in Central Europe has been distinct from the United States.