ICON

In terms of typology, the family homes which he designed mainly for his friends combined influences from the international style with vernacular elements of traditional Beskyd architecture. As a result, his work is highly original and authentic. Kalivoda himself described some of his buildings in Valašské Meziříčí or Rožnov pod Radhoštěm (6) as experimental sculptural buildings (one of them supposedly served as the model for the Šumperák-style house). At the same time, these abstract volumes, made using rustic materials such as stone and wood, are characteristic for the region. One place where we can find a remarkable set of Kalivoda’s buildings is in Jablůnka near Vsetín. In 1979, he

Beskyd Modernism

Vladimír Kalivoda was one of the most distinctive postwar architects active in northern Moravia. His buildings do not deny the inspiration from the interwar avant-garde that Kalivoda gained while studying under Antonín Kurial at Brno University of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering. His work also shows the clear influence of cosmopolitan Western architecture, which left its imprint on his buildings in the Moravian Wallachia region, where he definitively settled in the 1960s and where he realized several outstanding examples of Czechoslovak postwar residential architecture.

designed the local funeral hall (4), which stands out for its conical shinglecovered roof. Also in Jablůnka, he built two family homes for the Gabryš family (1, 2, 3, 5). Jan Gabryš was a colleague of Kalivoda’s, and they drafted several interior elements together, in particular sculptural fireplaces. It is no wonder that Kalivoda’s buildings diverged radically from the era’s usual production and became unique examples of residential architecture during the socialist era, when this building type was completely suppressed. The Gabryš houses are among the lesser-known examples of Kalivoda’s work, which also includes recreational mountain cottages (7) and the well-known Ebeka and Kordulka shepherd’s huts.