Ladislav Žák (1900-1973)

• Main Author: Dvořáková, Dita
• Other Authors: Švácha, Rostislav
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: Czech
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-278225

This thesis investigates the life and work of the architect Ladislav Žák (1900-1973), who also engaged in painting and drawing, furniture design, landscape architecture and architectural theory. His work was rooted in systematic theoretical considerations. In addition to working as an architect, Žak was a high school drawing teacher (1924-1930) and a professor of garden and landscape architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (1946-1973). As a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Žák studied painting with Professor Karel Krattner (1919-1924) and architecture with Professor Josef Gočár (1924-1927). In his early architectural and urban planning studies, as well as his furniture designs, he applied the principles of the new functionalist movement. He then followed the tenets of Le Corbusier's Purism into the 1930s. A characteristic attribute of all of Žak's work was a simultaneous consideration of tradition and a sensibility for current trends. This dichotomy was already present in his earliest theoretical writings.