Zdeněk Baueršíma

Zdeněk Baueršíma was born on 21 March 1934 in Jihlava, where his mother was from, but he grew up in several other Czech towns. The architect's father worked as an authorised agent for various textile factories, so the family moved frequently. After the war, they settled in Chlumec nad Cidlinou for a longer period of time and Zdeněk Baueršíma began to study at the grammar school in Havlíčkův Brod, but graduated in Jihlava in 1952. It was not until a year after graduation that he was able to enrol at a university. He was expelled from the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the CTU in Prague in his fifth year. The official reason was the late submission of a project, but the real reason was the fact that he had participated in a May Day rally where students shouted anti-state slogans.

Despite his expulsion from university, the architect was able to join the District Construction Company (Okresní stavební podnik) in Jihlava as a designer. After less than a year, however, he was called up for military service with the technical battalion. After returning from the army, where among other things, he had designed military flats, he started working at Stavoprojekt Jihlava. Thanks to the political relaxation in the 1960s, he was able to graduate from university in 1971. His architecture corresponds to the trends of the time – Baueršíma's buildings from the 1970s and 1980s can be classified as the international style (the House of Culture in Litohoř, Pasáž Theatre in Třebíč). His work in the 1990s is characterised by post-modern play with shapes (the Revenue Office in Humpolec). His projects in Jihlava were subject to the compulsory use of a pre-determined prefabricated construction system and, unlike many of his buildings in other cities, do not represent particularly inventive architecture. He was also engaged in the renovation of monuments, a topic which he also lectured on. Since the dissolution of Stavoprojekt in 1991 and his retirement, Zdeněk Baueršíma has continued designing. One of his most recent buildings is the chapel in Dobroutov, completed in 2019.

TŠ