CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Museum of Art Olomouc – Central European Forum / University Hospital Olomouc
Collective of authors: Vojtěch Jemelka – Jan Mléčka – Vilém Švec
Location on the map: 49.5871542N, 17.2391006E

SOMA – former coal warehouse Univerzity Hospital Olomouc
SOMA – former coal warehouse Univerzity Hospital Olomouc

In 1946, architect Bedřich Rozehnal (1902-1984) designed new utility facilities for the hospital complex in Olomouc, including coal storage, a residential semi-detached house and a ground-floor building of workshops and former garages. The design was implemented in the following eight years and, with some reservations, still fulfils its purpose today. The exception is the former coal store, which has nevertheless survived in an almost intact form and has been listed since 1958. The question of how to treat this outstanding functionalist building, while preserving its status and character, became the impetus for an adventurous revitalisation project – the collective of authors approached the University Hospital Olomouc and the Olomouc Museum of Art with the aim of not only bringing the building back to life, but giving it a new dimension. Starting in 2024, therefore, COAL STORAGE will gradually become SOMA – a centre for contemporary art with a focus on therapy with the leitmotif ´from birth to death´.

light – sound – trauma – individual and collective – resilient society – environment – meditation – sharing – education – workshop – animation

SOMA is a space designed for sharing, interacting, learning and overcoming various forms of trauma through and with the help of contemporary art forms. It is a community project supported by the Olomouc University Hospital and the Olomouc Museum of Art. It is shaped locally, combining meditative and activation tools. It focuses on the individual and his/her experience of his/her own life and situation. It uses the background of the original industrial building, located at the tip of the hospital campus, and as a beacon, it also marks the safe urban terrain. Who is the healthy and who is the patient here? What does a resilient society look like and how does it present itself? What use is public space to us? And how do we shape and share it?

During 2024, the first programme series will take place, including lectures, guided tours and small workshops, to focus attention on the building and a specific theme or examine the sustainability and shared interests of the community of professionals from medicine, conservation and contemporary art practice and general public.

The house

The utility facilities of the Olomouc University Hospital at 2 Albertov Street are an important and unique example of late functionalist architecture in the region, well designed both in terms of its design and layout. The farm pavilion has all the typical features of the work of its author, the Moravian architect Bedřich Rozehnal, especially the cylindrical details, the typical detail of the cornice with rounded cornice, the simple articulation of the windows and the moderation of all means of expression. There is no such intactly preserved complex in the country, it is unique at least in Central Europe.

Bedřich Rozehnal

Between 1922 and 1931 Prof. RTDr. Bedřich Rozehnal (1902–1984) studied architecture at the Czech Technical University (later the University of Technology) in Brno, his professors included Adolf Liebscher, Emil Králík and Jiří Kroha. In the studio of the latter, he graduated in 1931 with a degree in architecture and civil engineering. In 1945 he was awarded a professorship there. Five years later, the French architect Le Corbusier highly appreciated Rozehnal´s work – summarised in a publication entitled The Way to Solve the Hospital Question of Brno (Cesta k řešení nemocniční otázky města Brna). In 1956 he was awarded the scientific rank of Doctor of Technical Sciences and the Order of Merit for Construction, ten years later he became the head of the Environmental Design Cabinet of the J. E. Purkyně University in Brno and on 1 January 1969 he became the director of the Institute of Environmental Design at the Brno University of Technology. In 1971 it was transferred to the J. E. Purkyně University, soon dissolved without any reason and Bedřich Rozehnal was retired. From 1973 he worked in the design department of the Regional Institute of National Health in Brno. 

Among the most famous buildings of Bedřich Rozehnal are the House of Consolation on the Žlutý kopec in Brno (1934-1935), the Hospital in Nové Město na Moravě (1937-1940), the Hospital in Kyjov (1938, realized 1940-1943 and 1947-1948) and the Children´s Hospital in Brno-Černá Pole (project 1947-1948, realized only the first stage 1949-1954).

TEAM

Aleš Grambal is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and lecturer in psychotherapy training and postgraduate courses for psychiatrists. His research focuses on functional brain imaging, and his work has focused mainly on the psychotherapy of anxiety disorders and personality disorders. He is currently the head of the Department of Psychiatry at the Olomouc University Hospital.

Barbora Kundračíková studied at MUNI in Brno, Durham University and the University of Leeds. She is based at the Museum of Art Olomouc – Central European Forum (SEFO) and the Department of Art History at Palacký University in Olomouc. She is interested in modern and contemporary art, technical imagery and aesthetics.

Jakub Frank is a curator and art historian. He works as a curator at the Olomouc Museum of Art and studies at Masaryk University in Brno. He is the chief curator of the Cella and Hovoren Galleries and chairman of the Bludný kámen association in Opava. He has worked in the PLATO gallery and at the Luhovaný Vincent and Kukačka festivals. His activities include mapping and promoting independent audiovisual culture and organizing exhibitions mainly in Olomouc, Opava and Ostrava.

Vojtěch Jemelka is an architect and teacher. He studied at FA BUT in Brno, FA TU Liberec, School of Architecture and Design in Brighton, England and ŠA AVU Emil Přikryl. He has his own architectural practice and collaborates with m2ai, ertepl, KKKD and barley studio. He has a long-standing interest in small sacred buildings in the landscape, transformations of vernacular architecture and life in the mountains and other peripheries.

Jan Mléčka is an architect and university teacher. In 2005, together with Jiří Marek, he founded the open architectural platform M2AI.COM, where he is still active. Since 2006 he has been a teacher at the FA BUT in Brno. With Vojtěch Jemelka he has been working on sacred and sacred space for the last fifteen years.  

Vilém Švec is a historian of architecture and aesthetics, urban planner, and university lecturer. He worked, among others, at the Ministry of Regional Development and the Ministry of the Environment as an urban planner and landscape architect, then at the National Heritage Institute. He is mainly engaged in the history of architecture (including folk architecture), urbanism and general issues of applied anthropological aesthetics and public space.

Pavla Beranová is a lighting designer, she teaches at JAMU in Brno and DAMU in Prague. She worked at the Archa Theatre and completed two internships that significantly influenced her future direction: lighting in museums and galleries under the guidance of Jean Jacques Ezrati from C2RMF and lighting in architecture at Lumières studio Odile Soudant in Paris. She then worked for several years as a lighting designer at ACT lighting design studio in Brussels. Now living in Prague, she works freelance, collaborating with museums, theatres and autonomous creative personalities from all over the world.

Vladimír Havlík is a conceptual artist, performer, painter, draughtsman, teacher and frontman of the band Ostrý zub. He studied at the Department of Art Education at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Olomouc, where he now works as the head of the Intermedia Studio. Since the end of the 1970s, he has been realizing performances and happenings related to nature, public space and mutual communication. His actions are characterised by distinctive poetics, romanticism and ironic humour.  He prefers participation, sharing and collaboration.

Tomáš Jirsa is a member of the artistic and subcultural collective HLUBINA. He has been studying sound and its narratives in an environmental context for a long time, exploring aspects of its social equality, working on sound art and performance, and is a dramaturge and curator.  He is interested in the phenomenon of DO IT YOURSELF communities and their networking as an alternative to the classical notion of culture and cultural institutions.

Adéla Konečná is a performer, artist and member of the art and subcultural collective HLUBINA. She is a graduate of Multimedia Composition at the JAMU in Brno, worked at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, and continues her studies at the Faculty of Arts of the Brno University of Technology. Her long-term research focuses on the relationship between electronic music and social inequality, feminist approaches, the concept of listening, etc. She works with sound installation and reflects on urban sound pollution.

ContaCt

Mgr. BARBORA KUNDRAČÍKOVÁ, Ph.D.

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