The author deals with history of mass gym performances in the Czech Republic and analyzes theirs social and political meaning. From the point of view of gender that plays important role in rituals using symbolism of human body he compares Sokol festivals which have been taking place since nineteenth century with the communistic mass performances called ''Spartakiáda''. The mass Sokol exercises express the need to represent the national community. Although women couldn't participate in the public Sokol performances until the end of the nineteenth century, after their involvement there was strictly defined distinct symbolism of the female and male component (the beauty and the power). The author proves that also within the communistic mass exercises (''Spartakiáda'') there was applied consistent segregation of the gender roles, despite of communist ideology of unity of the working class. The duality of male and female body was kept, but a shift from the emphasis on the external characteristics of the body (beauty and power) to the emphasis on the functions of the human body took place. The division of the gender roles was functional - they served as a representation of society like a model of factory.
Both collective publications (Prefab houses 1: Fifty prefab housing schemes in the Czech Lands. A critical catalogue of the “Prefab house story” series of exhibitions and Prefab houses 2: History of housing schemes in the Czech Lands 1945–1989. A critical catalogue of the “Residence – prefab housing scheme: Planning, realization, housing 1945–1989” exhibition) are products of a broadly conceived interdisciplinary research project the deliverables of which included, inter alia, exhibitions in Prague and all regional capitals of the Czech Republic and which were awarded the prestigious Magnesia Litera prize in 2018 as an extraordinary feat in the fi eld of professional and educational literature. In the reviewer’s opinion, they bring the fi rstever systematic attempt to periodize the prefab-based building projects in the Czech part of the former Czechoslovakia between the mid-1940s and the end of the 1980s, at the same time providing a multifaceted characterization based on a representative sample of fifty prefab housing schemes in Bohemia and Moravia. and Each of them was subjected to a thorough artistic-historical analysis outlining the development of the housing scheme’s concept, providing brief information about its authors, describes its urbanistic concept, prefab technology used, and artefacts and decorations. Added to the above is a set of interdepartmental studies analyzing different aspects of the historical development of prefab housing schemes. The compact collective of authoresses and authors has succeeded in presenting the prefab housing schemes, no matter how similar they may seem, as a varied and dynamically developing phenomenon, which fact is underlined by excellent work with archival photographs and the generally outstanding graphic layout of the publications. The only critical comment the reviewer has is that the authors were so absorbed by the architectural aspect of the matter that they tended to overlook substantial changes of the socialist urbanism in Czechoslovakia.
Using the planning in Prague between the 1960s and 1980s as an example, the article deals with the transformation of the concept of a socialist city among urbanists and architects. The author describes how the generation of the inter-war modernist avant-garde inspired by works of Karel Teige (1900-1951) started reasserting itself again after Khrushchevʼs speech on architecture in 1954. Its infl uential member, Jiří Voženílek (1909-1986), became the Chief Architect of Prague. It was under his leadership that the General Plan of the Capital City of Prague was drafted at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. The author analyzes the plan as an example of the socialist modernism and urbanistic optimism of its creators who believed that, subject to a correct application of principles of inter-war avant-garde architecture, an urbanistic transformation might become the base of a social transformation of socialism. The plan envisaged sacrifi cing not only all residential quarters of Greater Prague built at the turn of the century, but also the very principle of a traditional city with a network of living streets which socialist urbanists saw as an incarnation of all evils that the development of towns and cities had thitherto been governed by: mixing of functions, too high density of population, lack of light and air. New housing projects comprising high-rise prefab residential buildings set in greenery were to become the opposite of traditional streets. The article explains how criticism of the housing schemes, the chief representative of which was urbanist Jiří Hrůza (1925-2012), had been growing stronger since as early as the mid-1960s. Infl uenced by works of US journalist and urbanistic activist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006), he presented a comprehensive critique of socialist modernism and questioned they very principle of urban planning as a tool of social transformation. The intellectual skepticism was soon thereafter refl ected in urban planning practices in Prague; they abandoned the modernistic principle of zoning and acknowledged the value (fi rst urbanistic, later architectural) of traditional quarters. In the end of the article, the author analyzes how the urbanistic turning point was confronted with building industry practices and political preferences demanding rapid construction of fl ats and apartments. and Překlad: Blanka Medková