Architecture of Czech Republic

Czech architecture or, more precisely, architecture in the Czech Republic is a concept that includes a number of significant historical and modern architectural monuments in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. From the earliest beginnings to the present, perhaps all the historical styles are represented, among them many monuments from different historical periods. Some of them are listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Terms and Conditions
The Czech lands, thanks to their position in the middle of the European continent, have been a frequent place of encounter of many cultures. They have also benefited from this diversity in the field of architecture, which is extremely rich in the Czech territory in terms of a variety of architectural styles and building styles and their concentration.

The richness of the natural resources of the building material and, last but not least, the able-bodied, hard-working and relatively well-educated population also influenced the development of architecture. Many foreign architects, especially from German countries, but also from Italy or France, have been working in the Czech lands since the Middle Ages, who have been building art and artworks from their own country. Specific features include folk architecture.

Some historical and architectural monuments in the Czech lands have fortunately avoided most of the stormy historical events, others have not, but unlike other states, many treasures have survived here since Romanic times. Czech and Moravian Gothic, Baroque and Rococo temples, palaces and palaces, as well as Art Nouveau and Modernist buildings are now an integral part of Western European architecture.

The architectural monuments are protected by the state, through the State Monument Institute and other governmental and non-governmental institutions. Nevertheless, the ruins of ancient fortresses, fortresses and ruins of castles, neglected mansions, or abandoned monasteries and dilapidated churches are spread throughout the Czech Republic. The destruction of many historically valuable objects was brought, in part, by troops of foreign armies, for example, during the Thirty Years’ War, but mainly two hundred years before the Hussites. They conquered a number of castles and devastated, destroyed and fired many temples, churches and monasteries in Bohemia in Moravia and the territory of today’s Slovakia. On the contrary, in the so-called Dark Age, the Dark Age of the White Mountain, the largest number of frequently valuable Baroque monuments was created. Enlightenment period for the reign of Emperor Joseph II. meant the interruption of monasteries and churches and their conversion to objects for secular and military purposes. Another great disaster for many architectural jewels was not German occupiers, but again domestic Communists, who destroyed or nationalized all chateaux and monasteries, and then introduced them into industrial productions, transformed them for the needs of the army, etc. The consequences of often very insensitive treatment are many places still visible today.

Royal Summer Palace in Prague considered the purest Renaissance architecture outside Italy
The Renaissance style penetrated the Bohemian Crown in the late 15th century when the older Gothic style started to be slowly mixed with Renaissance elements. An outstanding example of the pure Renaissance architecture in Bohemia is the Royal Summer Palace, which was situated in a newly established garden of Prague Castle. Evidence of the general reception of the Renaissance in Bohemia, involving a massive influx of Italian architects, can be found in spacious châteaux with elegant arcade courtyards and geometrically arranged gardens. Emphasis was placed on comfort, and buildings that were built for entertainment purposes also appeared.

In the 17th century, the Baroque style spread throughout the Crown of Bohemia. Very outstanding are the architectural projects of the Czech nobleman and imperial generalissimo Albrecht von Wallenstein from the 1620s (Wallenstein Palace). His architects Andrea Spezza and Giovanni Pieroni reflected the most recent Italian production and were very innovative at the same time. Czech Baroque architecture is considered to be a unique part of the European cultural heritage thanks to its extensiveness and extraordinariness. In the first third of the 18th century the Bohemian lands were one of the leading artistic centers of the Baroque style. In Bohemia there was completed the development of the Radical Baroque style created in Italy by Francesco Borromini and Guarino Guarini in a very original way. Leading architects of the Bohemian Baroque were Jean-Baptiste Mathey, František Maxmilián Kaňka, Christoph Dientzenhofer, and his son Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer.

In the 18th century Bohemia produced an architectural peculiarity – the Baroque Gothic style, a synthesis of the Gothic and Baroque styles. This was not a simple return to Gothic details, but rather an original Baroque transformation. The main representative and originator of this style was Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel, who used this style in renovating medieval monastic buildings or in Pilgrimage Church of Saint John of Nepomuk.

During the 19th century, the revival architectural styles were very popular in the Bohemian monarchy. Many churches were restored to their presumed medieval appearance and there were constructed many new buildings in the Neo-Romanesque, Neo-Gothic and Neo-Renaissance styles (National Theatre, Lednice–Valtice Cultural Landscape, Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul in Brno). At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries the new art style appeared in the Czech lands – Art Nouveau. The best-known representatives of Czech Art Nouveau architecture were Osvald Polívka, who designed the Municipal House in Prague, Josef Fanta, the architect of the Prague Main Railway Station, Jan Letzel, Josef Hoffmann and Jan Kotěra.

Bohemia contributed an unusual style to the world’s architectural heritage when Czech architects attempted to transpose the Cubism of painting and sculpture into architecture (House of the Black Madonna). During the first years of the independent Czechoslovakia (after 1918), a specifically Czech architectural style, called Rondo-Cubism, came into existence. Together with the pre-war Czech Cubist architecture it is unparalleled elsewhere in the world. The first Czechoslovak president T. G. Masaryk invited the prominent Slovene architect Jože Plečnik to Prague, where he modernized the Castle and built some other buildings (Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord).

Czech architecture on old engravings
Some of the old period engravings capture some non-existent objects, or they can read an approximate historical form.

Remains of Buildings and Ruins
Many important buildings of the oldest period of Czech architecture are now reminded only of ruins and ruins, or just the foundations they left behind. The most significant ones include:

the foundations of the Romanesque Byzantine in the Sázava Monastery, or the Gothic vault of the monastery church of St. Prokop was there
the remains of the St. Vitus’ rotunda at the Prague Castle, its foundations are on the site of today’s Prague cathedral of St. Welcome.
the rotunda of St. Wenceslas in Prague (only foundations under the Malostranský professional house)

Romance Architecture
Written testimonies about the presence of settlements in the territory of Prague date back to the second half of the 9th century, although Slavic settlement has existed since the 6th century. There are some churches associated with the reign of the oldest Přemyslids. At the end of the 9th century, the first church dedicated to the Virgin Mary was commissioned by Prince Bořivoj. An important message is the city of Prague from the Arab-Jewish buyer Ibrahim ibn Jakub from the middle of the 10th century on “a century-old city built of stone and wood and a developed trade”, pointing to a rich city at that time. It lay in the territory of today’s Old Town.

Gothic Architecture
In the Gothic period (13th – 14th and partly also in the 15th century), the Czech kingdom became one of the most important countries of Europe. Despite its formal subordination, the Holy Roman Empire had considerable autonomy. The King of Bohemia was the most powerful of the electors, and he was the emperor (Charles IV and Zikmund Lucemburský) or at least the German king (Wenceslas IV) as the highest Reich waiter. The country was actively developing trade and crafts, urban life and culture flourished, and architecture along with them.

Raná Gothika
Architecture as a manifestation of cultural development began to grow sharply in the Czech lands under the reign of the last five Premyslid kings (1197-1306), in the style called Early Gothic. In 1233 was built in this style the Anežsky monastery in Prague, later the Old Synagogue in Prague (second oldest still functioning synagogue in Europe), basilica in Kouřim, Kolín, Písek, Jindřichův Hradec, Zvíkov castles or Bezděz, in 1263 the Zlatá Koruna monastery, bridge in Roudnice nad Labem, later a number of Prague buildings: Jacob, the Monastery of St. Anny, the Church of St. Jiljí.

Top Gothic
Gothic architecture culminated in the Bohemian lands for the reign of the Czech King and Roman Emperor Charles IV., who made his home town of Prague the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. He left Prague to build the Charles Bridge in the top Gothic style and the generous construction of the Cathedral of St. Vitus, with the help of architect Petr Parler and his son Jan Parler. Emperor Charles also commissioned new coronation jewels and instructed French architect Matyas of Arras to build Karlštejn castle in central Bohemia over Berounka, where Czech jewels were to be preserved together with the crown jewels of the Holy Reich. Another important achievement of Charles was the establishment of the New Town of Prague with the Franciscan monastery at the Church of Our Lady of the Snows, or the monastery of St. Charles the Great in Karlovy Vary.

Period of Renaissance and Mannerism

Renesance
In the second half of the 15th century, the ideas of the Italian Renaissance penetrated into the Kingdom of Bohemia, forming an important stage of development in architecture. In the Czech lands, the Renaissance style manifested itself from the end of the 15th century until the first half of the 17th century , while in the Czech lands the Renaissance spread indirectly, especially from Uher, from where the Renaissance style through Moravia came to the rest of the Czech Kingdom. The oldest elements of Renaissance architecture in Moravia are the portals of the chateau in Tovačov and Moravská Třebová from 1492.

Sacral Renaissance Buildings
Generally speaking, Renaissance architecture in the Czech Republic, in the vast majority of cases, manifested itself in secular works. The sacral architecture of this period manifested itself rather rarely, which is related to the then weakened property position of the Church. The new churches were financed by cities, the Czech Chamber (the Royal Office), but most often the nobility. Czech renaissance churches often subordinated to an older Gothic tradition.

Jagiellonian Renaissance
In this first period, the Renaissance style still blends with Gothic elements (typical for example, a circular or cellar vault).

The first significant achievement in the Renaissance architecture – still a distinct Gothic foundation – was the construction of the already mentioned Vladislav Hall at the Prague Castle, or its windows and portals, dated back to 1493. The architectural forms of this secular non-Ottoman palace hall, designed for representative purposes,, feasts and tournaments are still somewhat cumbersome, full of compromises. They are still growing out of the Gothic visions, as evidenced by a vault with ribbons. The building is the work of Benedict Rejt, whose work is also Ludvík’s wing of the Old Royal Palace of the Prague Castle from the beginning of the 16th century, which is considered to be the oldest Renaissance palace building in Bohemia, although it still uses some late Gothic vaults.

The Renaissance of the First Habsburgs
The first truly Renaissance building in Prague would be the Royal Summer Palace in the Royal Garden of Prague Castle, whose architects were probably the Italians Paolo della Stella and Giovanni Spazzio and later Bonifác Wolmut. This building is considered to be the purest Renaissance building (in the sense of the Italian Renaissance) north of the Alps. Bonifác Wolmut built a ballroom in the garden, and added a Renaissance cube to St. Vitus Cathedral.

Close to Prague, another important Renaissance Summer Palace – the Star on the White Mountain – was built on the initiative of the Royal Family. The design of the architectural concept was probably created by the Czech prince himself, Archduke Ferdinand II. Tyrol, who had worked in Prague for the time as a royal governor representing his father, Ferdinand.

Mannerism
Mannerism was a transition phase between Renaissance and Baroque art. Although Prague was at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century an important European center of manicism, in Czech architecture this style was not very clear and had a purely palatial character. He was in close proximity to the court of Emperor Rudolf II. (Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Adrian de Vries, Bartholomeus Spranger), who were not architects. Mannerism in Bohemia was more of an interest in everything unusual, exceptional, (Singing fountain by sculptor Francesca Terzia, 1562), the cabinet of curiosities Rudolf II.with collections of special to obscure artefacts from minerals and ancient coins to American Indian creations). Rudolf II. he collected a very large collection of originals and copies of many works of art, paintings, sculptures, weapons and other artifacts, which, unfortunately, fell victim to the Swedish plundering of Prague. The interest in everything unusual had an overlap in Czech Baroque.

Baroque and Rococo

Baroque
Baroque to the Kingdom of Bohemia was gradually brought by supporters of the victorious Catholic Party after the defeat of the Estonian insurrection at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620, which was the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War in which a large part of Western Europe was introduced. At this time, the Czech lands recorded on the one hand social, economic and political decline, which is somewhat inaccurately called darkness. On the other hand, there was an unprecedented development of art, which left a large, perhaps even the largest, number of valuable architectural monuments in the Czech Republic, as well as sculpture and painting works, as well as literary and above allmusical. At that time, a number of new families from Catholic countries came to the Czech kingdom and started building châteaux, palaces, churches, chapels, monasteries and hospitals in their new estates, to a great extent supporting art and science. At that time, the Czech lands experienced real building boom. For work to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible, architects and builders from Italy, Austria, Germany, and some even from France were invited to the country. Many Czech and foreign architects, painters, sculptors, or garden architects worked in the Czech lands, leaving behind many real jewels.

Early Baroque
Typical examples of Baroque architecture were the construction of sacral buildings, as well as entire complexes of aristocratic settlements. An example might be the construction of the Waldstein Palace with the Wallenstein Garden after Generalissimus Albrecht of Wallenstein acquired several houses and lands under the Prague Castle. The houses were demolished and built a magnificent palace with Italian-style gardens, which until then were unprecedented in Prague. Another major building project was the Jesuit Clementinum, several times rebuilt. It consisted of several inner courtyards, including two churches and a mirror chapel, a monastery dormitory and a large library(today’s National Library). It can be said that all the first-generation architects have somehow contributed to the emergence of Klementinum: starting with Giovanni Domenik Orsim or Francesca Caratti after Jan Baptist Mathey.

Baroque Theater
Particular attention also deserves the unique phenomenon of the operation of a very fashionable Baroque opera which is to a large extent connected with specific chateaux, especially in Moravia: Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou, Archbishop’s Chateau Kroměříž, Mikulov, Náměšť nad Oslavou, Holešov and Kuks Hospital. A unique phenomenon is the Castle Baroque Theater in Český Krumlov, the oldest and richest of the four original Baroque theaters in the world. Castle Jezeř in northern Bohemia was the venue of the world’s private Prime Minister Beethoven 3rd Symphony “Eroics”, or Haydn’s Oratorio “Creation” and many others. Today, the castle is located on the edge of a mining pit and is threatened with extinction.

Rural Baroque
Baroque architecture penetrated more or less spontaneously into the rural environment as well. Many older rural churches were rebuilt in Baroque style, but many new buildings were built. In addition to mansions and mansions, almost every Czech, Moravian and Silesian village can meet Baroque churches or statues. Somewhat belatedly, at the very end of the Baroque culture, rustic houses emerged in a separate form, collectively called the baroque farm, which already had elements of classical architecture. The most significant example is the Holašovice village, whose semitrage was listed on the World Heritage List, but we can find it in other South Bohemian villages Květov, Borkovice,Soběslavská Blata.

Top Baroque
The top baroque was experienced by the Czech architecture at the turn of the first half of the 18th century and it is perceived in the Czech architecture as a period of the highest Baroque.

At the time of the High Baroque in the Czech lands, two monuments listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, the Column of the Holy Trinity in Olomouc from 1714-1754 and the pilgrimage church of St. Jan Nepomucký on the Green Mountain built in 1719-1722 in the unique Baroque Gothic style by the Czech architect of Italian origin Jan Blažej Santini.

Baroque Gothic
Perhaps the most significant figure of Bohemian Baroque architecture is the top works of Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel. Santini-Aichel is famous for his own style, called Baroque Gothic (sometimes also Gothic Baroque), which combines elements of both styles. The main Santini buildings include the pilgrimage church of St. John of Nepomuk on the Green Mountain (UNESCO), the Kladruby Monastery or the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist in Sedlec near Kutná Hora ad.

Rococo
The rococo style in the Bohemian lands was more in the art than in architecture. An example of the year’s buildings is the Nové Hrady Chateau, the Bellarie Summer Palace in the Český Krumlov Castle Complex and the Dobříš Chateau. The rococo elements include, for example, the Archbishop’s Palace on Hradčanské Square, or the Kinsky Palace on the Old Town Square in Prague.

Baroque and rococo buildings are gradually changing into classical forms, and in this context we are sometimes talking about Baroque Classicism.

Classicism
While the late Baroque period in the Czech Republic is primarily associated with the reign of Maria Theresa (1740 – 1780), after her death, this style is increasingly being replaced by Classicism and finally Empire.Přechod from Baroque to Classicism announces the reconstruction of Prague Castle Vienna architect Nicolo Pacassi. At him and Kilian Ignac Dientzenhofer builds Ignaz Jan Nepomuk Palliardi, in which the home has high baroque tradition blends with a classical décor. With Pacassi’s work, whose castle reconstruction was realized, with the work of Johann Bernhard Fischer of Erlachis related to Antonin Haffenecker, another architect who has worked on Baroque forms of classicism (the Estates Theater).

Empire style
The empire style period is mainly associated with the First French Empire at the time of Napoleon I. It took approximately as the name suggests (empire = empire), this style follows the ancient traditions of ancient Greek and Roman styles, uses their building functions and motifs.

Styles of the turn of the 19th and 20th Century

Secession
An important feature of the Czech architecture was the wave of Art Nouveau at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Typical are Art Nouveau buildings, primarily as private villas, hotels, or public buildings (town hall, school, crematorium) as well as several churches or castle buildings.

Among the most important Czech architects of this period are Antonín Balšánek, Osvald Polívka, Josef Fanta and Jan Letzel, Alfons Mucha

The most significant construction works of this short period include mainly the

municipal houses, public buildings, offices, schools, etc.
Municipal House in Prague,
building of the New Town Hall in Prague
Silesian Ostrava Town Hall
Café Habsburg in Ostrava
Liberec Crematorium
Silesian Grammar School in Opava
New Strasnice School (dilapidated building)
Vršovická záložna
Building Goethe-Institut and other houses on Masaryk Embankment in Prague
Prague Vysehrad Railway Station (dilapidated building)
Fantova Central Station building
The main train station in Brno

Private houses, vilyː
Bílkova Villa
Vila Löw-Beer in the Brno-Black Pole
Löw-Beer’s Villa in Svitavka
Villa Löw-Beer in Půlpakna
Šalounova villa in Prague
Vila Gustava Jirsche, also popular with the Knight ‘s House in Teplice
Becher’s Villa in Karlovy Vary

Hotels
Grandhotel Europe and Meran on Wenceslas Square
Grandhotel Praha
Hotel Paris in Prague
Hotel Union in Prague

Theaters, artistic and cultural buildings
Prague Hlavo Building (Masarykovo nábřeží)
building of the Vinohrady Theater
Municipal Theater Mladá Boleslav
East Bohemian Theater in Pardubice
Theater of Josef Kajetán Tyl in Pilsen
Small Scene of the New German Theater
Topic’s salon
Podlipanské museum in Český Brod
Museum of the Capital City of Prague
Libeňská sokolovna

Industrial buildings
Brewery Braník
Polna Municipal Power Plant
Smíchovská tržnice
Barracks in Most (dilapidated building)
Bridge of Emperor Franz I

Cubism
Cubism appeared at the beginning of the 20th century as an avant-garde artistic movement based on entirely new ideas. The term “cubism” was the first to be used by the French critic of Louis Vauxcelles in 1908, although this use was misleading, but the expression, despite the artist’s displeasure, eventually lived.

The principle of cubism lies in the spatial conception of the work where it captures objects not only from one angle but from several angles simultaneously. The displayed object was decomposed to basic geometric shapes (mainly the cube – Latin cubus). Cubism therefore had to address new perspectives and create new spatial relationships between subjects. Three-dimensional objects have created many views with unusual angles of view.

Cubism influenced, whether directly or indirectly, the development of new artistic styles (futurism, constructivism and expressionism). Unlike other directions, Cubism, for example, did not have a say in literature. He appeared mainly in painting, sculpture and partly also in the architecture of former Czechoslovakia, where he gained the character of an independent artistic style.

Cubism first appeared primarily in fine arts (Picasso, Braque, Cézanne), strongly influenced by some architects, but it is not possible to speak of pure Cubism, since, of course, they had to be primarily functional. Cubist architects created individual works that make a rather peculiar impression. Cubist architecture in the Czechoslovak territory was active approximately from 1911 until the 1920s, especially in Prague. His most distinguished representatives joined in the Manes Artists Association. Among them were painters Emil Filla, Antonín Procházka and Josef Čapekand the sculptor Otto Gutfreund and the architects Josef Gočár, Josef Chochol, Pavel Janák and others. Cubist style is unique in the world and has never reached the cubist architecture of such a boom as in the Czech Republic.

Architects:

Josef Gočár – House of the Black Mother of God in Prague, Spa House in Bohdanc, Bauer’s Villa in Libodřice
Josef Chochol – Kovařovicova Villa in Prague under Vyšehrad, apartment house in Neklana Street in Prague, triple on Rašínovo nábřeží in Prague under Vyšehrad
Pavel Janák – Hlávka Bridge in Prague
Otakar Novotný – Teachers’ Homes in Prague
Vlastislav Hofman – The Devil’s Cemetery in Prague

Rondocubism
Rondocubism is a separate local form of Czech architecture. It developed as a separate branch of the Cubist style after the First World War in the newly established Czechoslovakia, where it became a national style for a short time. However, it was gradually displaced by functionalism in the middle of the 20th century.

For rondocubism, as the name suggests, it is characteristic of the use of round shapes, such as arches, circles and ovals, which are based on Cubist foundations. These were to remind national Slavic traditions. Rondocubism was most prominent in Prague, but also in other places, especially in the form of industrial architecture. World Summit for construction rondocubistic architectures are considered Store Legionary banks, short Legiobanka by Josef Gočár and Adria Palace by Pavel Janak in Prague.

Functionalism
Since the 1920s, architecture has been leaning towards functionalism, an architectural style that mainly applies criteria of functionality, utility, fulfilling practical purpose. This direction is governed by the motto “form follows function”, which in practice is manifested by the simple to simple simplicity of the lines.

In this style, a number of constructions, such as, for example, originated in the territory of Czechoslovakia at that time

Trade Fair Palace in Prague,
Zeman’s Cafe
Bata’s skyscraper in Zlín,
villa Tugendhat in Brno,
Barrandov terraces
Hotel Julis
Krematorium in Olomouc
Crematorium in Brno
Husův sbor (Smíchov)
Husův sbor (Vinohrady)
Synagogue Agudas achim
Smíchov Synagogue
The main representatives of this direction belonged to architects Jan Kotěra and Josef Gočár in the Czech lands and, also at the time, Prague, the prominent Slovenian architect Josip Plečnik. He was the author of, for example, the Church of the Sacred Heart of the Lord at Jiřího z Poděbrad Square in Prague. Another important foreign architect working in Czechoslovakia was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the author of the Tugendhat villa.

The Second Half of the 20th Century

Socialist Realism
In the 1950s, socialist realism (also called sorela) was required as an official style. The characteristic buildings in its spirit are the hotel Jalta on Wenceslas Square or Poruba settlement in Ostrava. The so-called Stalin neoclassicism represented by the International Hotel in Dejvice, Prague, was a specific submarine.

Brussels style
At the end of the 1950s, however, the design of the architecture (and of course, design) introduced a new style, called Brussels – that it was introduced at the World Expo 58 in Brussels. It was marked with round shapes and glass facades. A typical Brussels-style building was, in particular, the Expa Pavilion (now non-existent) and the Czech restaurant at Expu (now located in Letenské sady in Prague). Other important buildings of the Brussels-style were the Z pavilion at the Brno exhibition grounds, the Podolí swimming stadium or the railway station in Havířov.

Czech brutalism
At the end of the 1960s, however, the Brussels style pushed the Czech version of brutality. In particular, the works of Věra Machoninová and her husband Vladimír Machonin (house of home culture in Prague, Thermal hotel in Karlovy Vary, Kotva department store in Prague, Embassy of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in Berlin) are valued. Of the other brutalist buildings, the Czechoslovak Embassy in London by architects Jan Bočan, Jan Šrámek and Karel Štěpánský is commemorated in London, the Intercontinental Hotel in Prague by Karel Bubeníček and Karel Filsákor the buildings of Karel Prager (building of the former Federal Assembly, New Stage of the National Theater). The most valued building of this time was the transmitter and hotel in Ještěd by Karel Hubáček.

Postmodern architecture
In post-communist architecture played a significant role in the work of Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunič Dancing House in Prague, directly initiated by Vaclav Havel, and which is often cited as a symbol of postmodern architecture. Jean Nouvel (Zlatý Anděl in Prague Smíchov) or Ricardo Bofill, who was involved in the modernization of the former Karlín (Corso Karlín, etc.), was one of the world’s leading architects at that time. In preparation, the project of transformation of the Masaryk Railway Station, prepared by the Pritzker Prize winner Zaha Hadidová. The National Technical Library project in Dejvice, Prague, was the biggest credit for homebuilding projects. The heavily discussed project of the new building of the National Library of Jan Kaplický remained only on paper. Among the successful contemporary Czech architects is also Eva Jiřičná, who designed, for example, Orange at the Prague Castle, Congress Center Zlín and other buildings abroad.

Czech natives were also significant architects Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich and Balthasar Neumann. They participated in the development of especially Vienna, as well as the Czech builder Josef Hlávka.

Source From Wikipedia