German Grammar School (Německé gymnázium) and a modern gymnasium extension

   

The German Grammar School (Německé gymnázium) building was erected on Jana Masaryka Street from 1889–1890, soon after the completion of the adjacent Boys' Municipal School, which it matched both in height and style. It was designed by the Brno architect Josef Karásek and built by the local builders Franz and Ignaz Lang in cooperation with Karel Tebich and Laurenz Schrammel. The main frontage of the three-storey building faces Jana Masaryka Street, and the side faces Tyršova Street. The ground floor of both façades is divided by a bossage, the upper floors by rustication, and the windows of the piano nobile are topped with triangular pediments. The central avant-corps with the main entrance to the building, whose floors are decorated with giant order pilasters, is topped with an attic gable, as is the entrance to the adjacent Boys' School. The Neo-Renaissance morphology is consistent with the older Boys' Municipal School building, as well as many other schools built at the end of the nineteenth century throughout the Monarchy.

The main wing has a double-section layout, so that the individual classrooms can be entered from the long corridor, originally illuminated by direct light from the courtyard. The short wing on Tyršova Street, which has a separate side entrance, used to house the school library, the school caretaker's flat, and art rooms on the upper floors. In the courtyard wing perpendicular to the axis of the main entrance, Josef Karásek designed a relatively small gymnasium.

The German Grammar School was inaugurated on 8 September 1890 and operated for almost thirty years – in 1919, it was replaced by the Czech Reform Grammar School (České reformní gymnázium). At the beginning of the 1940s, its representatives planned the reconstruction of the school, which was to fill the vacant lot between the existing building and the neighbouring residential house on Tyršova Street. The newly added premises were supposed to house additional classrooms and studies and, above all, the gymnasium was to be extended as it was probably already insufficient in size. In the middle of the Second World War, however, for obvious reasons, the extension could not be built. The gymnasium was reconstructed in 1946, and further minor modifications were made in the 1960s when some workshops were set up. In the seventies, or perhaps in the eighties, an architecturally drab four-storey pavilion with additional classrooms was added in the courtyard, connected with Karásek’s historicist building by a walkway. The idea of filling the vacant lot and expanding the gymnasium did not regain a firm outline until the following decade.

The new design of the gymnasium, which completely replaced the original facility, was drawn up in 1993 by the architect Jaromír Homolka from the then newly established Penta studio. It filled the space between the historic building, the pavilion from the 1980s, and Tyršova Street, which the building faces with its façade featuring a segmental portico and a round window on the top floor. The façade of the gymnasium itself, enclosed in the courtyard, is divided by windows of atypical shapes. The play between asymmetry and symmetry, and materials and shapes, contribute to this building's postmodern appearance.

Literature and other sources 

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