Vladimír Grégr and architecture in Czechoslovakia during the interwar years

The subject of this thesis is Czech architect Vladimír Grégr (1902-1943). His buildings are mainly in Prague, and concentrated in the Barrandov Terraces area. So far academic scholarship has focused on the aerodynamic aspect of his work, a trend which was also current in Germany and Poland, and represented by a group of architects called Der Ring, which included figures such as Hugo Häring, Hans Scharoun, Adolf Rading, Max and Bruno Taut. While this influence is certainly present in Grégr's buildings that date from 1930-33, it occupies a relatively minor part of his career as a whole, when compared to subsequent projects dating from 1933-1940. The end of this second period is marked by his arrest by the Nazis, an imprisonment which lasted until his execution in Plötzensee in 1943. It was during this second phase when Grégr constructed romanticized Spanish villas, resembling cottages with their saddle roofing, wooden shutters and arcades. As yet we can only speculate as to why he changed his architectural style, but it appears to be a deliberate regression from Functionalism and has more in common with Frank Lloyd Wright, Czech folk architecture and elements of the German trend, heimatstil. I also describe parallel cases in Czech architecture of the same period, which suggests that Grégr's approach to..