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Dalibor Vesely (1934-2015) in Memoriam Dalibor Vesely (1934-2015) in memoriam Autor(en): Leatherbarrow, David Objekttyp: Obituary Zeitschrift: Scholion : Bulletin Band (Jahr): 9 (2015) PDF erstellt am: 26.09.2021 Nutzungsbedingungen Die ETH-Bibliothek ist Anbieterin der digitalisierten Zeitschriften. Sie besitzt keine Urheberrechte an den Inhalten der Zeitschriften. Die Rechte liegen in der Regel bei den Herausgebern. Die auf der Plattform e-periodica veröffentlichten Dokumente stehen für nicht-kommerzielle Zwecke in Lehre und Forschung sowie für die private Nutzung frei zur Verfügung. Einzelne Dateien oder Ausdrucke aus diesem Angebot können zusammen mit diesen Nutzungsbedingungen und den korrekten Herkunftsbezeichnungen weitergegeben werden. Das Veröffentlichen von Bildern in Print- und Online-Publikationen ist nur mit vorheriger Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber erlaubt. 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Other capitals fascinated him, say in response to one or another of the difficult too: Vienna and Paris, also London and Berlin, and decisive questions that face architecture, but none of these indicated so clearly what cities, and our lives within them today. It is also he would have described as the real possibilities the reply many will give to the question why for the creative transformation of modern now, why this unwelcome silence from a voice civilization. Europe was for him both an idea that still had so much to say? No answer. and a living reality, the continuance and Resignation wasn't intended with his use of this renewal of which required disciplined reflection, term; instead, an invitation to thought, to think creative expression, and a sense of common again. The questions that motivated his work purpose. survive his death, for they were not only his but It was in Prague that he met and attended ours, such was his grasp of contemporary the seminars of the Czech philosopher Jan conditions, his penetration into primary issues. Patocka. While widely influential there and Facing his themes without him, resuming the elsewhere in Europe, Patocka's teaching enquiry into the city and its culture, architecture career was a painful struggle, one that gave and its articulations, or technology and its intellectual and moral orientation to Vesely's mixed blessings, means not only thinking with own life and work. Under the corrosive influence him but beyond him, accepting the fact that his of successive totalitarian regimes — first work is unfinished and ours continues. The Nazi, then Communist - Patocka was free answer to his silence cannot be no answer. Yes, from censorship and could teach as he chose the conversations he sought so passionately and for only eight of his 42 active years. As one of enjoyed so folly have come to an end. All we three spokesmen for Charter 77, he had argued have now are some memories and a body of that political freedom included personal writings, texts now seen anew, all together, responsibility and an orientation toward the because nothing more will be added. Perhaps the good, hardly inflammatory principles, but questions he asked bear witness to his legacy no nevertheless ideas that were renounced by the less truthfully than the writings. functionaries who sought to implement Prague, the city of his birth, served Vesely Brezhnev's doctrine in occupied lands. Patocka's throughout his life as an emblem of the conti¬ death in 1977 resulted from a brain hemorrhage i86 Personen /Nach rufe suffered under police interrogation, preceded sophical convictions. Reversing the roles of by ten weeks of intense persecution. By this the clear and obscure - reconsidering what had time Vesely had already emigrated to been taken for granted - was for Husserl England. But his teacher's life and lessons philosophy's first step, as it was for both Patocka remained with him, and not only him. When and Vesely. Vesely introduced himself to the philosopher Dalibor Vesely's formal education was not, Paul Ricoeur years later, the very first mention of course, in philosophy; he studied architecture, of Patocka's name brought tears to the French engineering, and art, obtaining both philosopher's eyes. No less emotional was professional and research degrees. He Vesely when he told this story. received his Ph.D. from Charles University, Much more promising and no less influential having researched Central European baroque were his teacher's early years. In 1934, the architecture. His early interest in the work of year of Vesely's birth, Patocka read at the Kilian Ignâc Dientzenhofer, Balthasar World Philosophical Congress in Prague a Neumann, Johann Santini-Aichel, and Fischer von lecture written by his own teacher Edmund Erlach, and later that of Guarino Guarini and Husserl, also Czech, and founder of the phe- Francesco Borromini, continued throughout nomenological tradition, the style of thought his life. A friendship developed over many Vesely brought to architecture. The mutual years with Mojmir Horyna, a profound scholar respect between the two philosophers was of Santini-Aichel, was very important to him, profound. As a sign that Patocka was heir to a rich as was his long and very close association with intellectual tradition, Husserl gave his student Werner Oechslin, to whose annual "Barock- a desk-top lectern he had received from Tomas sommerkurs" in Einsiedeln Vesely made regular Masaryk, the founder of modern Czech contribution for a couple of decades. In the democracy. Patocka's own writings, often circulated months before his death he was assembling and samizdat, developed Husserlian ideas, revising his many papers and lectures on together with those of his other teachers, baroque architecture, rethinking and enlarging Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger. When those texts as chapters for his next book. Vesely attended the Patocka seminars he was Baroque was not a category of architectural style among artists, philosophers, poets, and for Vesely, but one manifestation - perhaps one playwrights, including Vaclav Havel, future president of the most articulate manifestations - of the of the country. The interrogative habit of richness of European culture. When his advice mind Vesely exhibited throughout his life was on curriculum was sought by the organizers of no doubt exemplified by many in this circle, the Central European University he certainly that of its leader. Husserl 's reply to recommended concentration on baroque culture. Patocka's request to come to Freiburg to study After his academic training in architecture, with him in 1933 contained the following Vesely worked with a number of the leading condition: that you truly wish to understand Czech modern architects: Josef Havlicek, and that you bring no preconceived philo¬ Karel Honzik, and Jaroslav Fragner. Much Personen /Nachrufe Dalibor Vesely, Shanghai, April 2005 (Photo David Leatherbarrow) later, he would return to these figures and this he fondly recalled hours in his father's studio. architecture, also that of Pavel Janâk, in a Surrealism in both its Czech and wider European paper that reassessed the nature and meaning manifestations remained a lifelong of what is commonly called Czech Cubism. In preoccupation, one that coupled fascination with his early years of professional work in critique, the latter a matter of principle for architecture he also practiced stage set design, him because the encounter with reality, always examples of which, he once admitted, had bitter for André Breton and the poets and appeared in some operatic productions. In 1962 painters he promoted, was, Vesely maintained, he continued his academic work in Munich, inescapable in architecture. where he had contacts with the art historians After Munich, he spent extended periods in Hans Sedlmayr and Hermann Bauer, key Paris. While there in 1968 he met with members figures in the study of baroque and rococo art of the Situationalist Group. His set of and architecture. While there, he also studied colleagues called themselves the Continual- with the great humanist Ernesto Grassi, who ists. With that name in mind it is not surprising had been one of Martin Heidegger's students. that the title he and Mohsen Mostafavi 1962 seems also to have been the year of chose years later for the summary catalogue of Vesely's first lengthy publication - at least the architectural work they had guided at the earliest that has appeared in English - a study Architectural Association School in London was of Czech secular buildings, usually called Architecture and Continuity (1982). Between castles, from the time of the Middle Ages to the 1962 and 1968 Vesely also visited London on 20th century. That text ended in a way that a few occasions. In addition to curiosity about anticipated much of his later work, particularly the architecture being developed there, a the theme of continuity. He offered a more personal concern motivated the visits: critique of so-called "purism" in restoration his younger brother Drahosh, with whom he practices: erasing historical accumulations in was always close, was a post-doctoral fellow, order to simulate original appearances later a physics professor at Oxford University. rendered the works themselves lifeless. After the end of the Prague Spring in 1968, Vesely's deep concern for art in its several when a return to that city became impossible, forms was not only academic, nor did it begin England became the permanent home of both with his formal study.
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