Architecture historian and researcher Adam Štěch has selected thousands of his own photographs, generating an atlas of architectural and interior details created by architects and designers as part of their artistic concepts for building designs.
 
The exhibition presents these details both as aspects of architecture and as objects of unique artistic value designed for specific places and purposes. The selection of lighting, seating, storage spaces, tables, railings, doors, handles, windows, floors, walls and other decorative or functional elements celebrates the Modernist idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk and records the range of skills practised by modernist architects from Art Nouveau to Modernism and beyond.
 
The aim of this project is to create the biggest database of one-of-a-kind designs from specific buildings and interiors captured by a single person and to survey previously unexplored chapters in the history of applied art.

The idea for the show was born with the first exhibition at the Brompton Design District in London in 2017, commissioned by curator Jane Withers. Only 400 photographs of architectural and design details were presented there. Since then, Adam Štěch has intensified his research and travelled to more than 40 countries around the world to record Modernist buildings by famous as well as little known and forgotten architects. The exhibition features exceptional designs by seminal figures such as Gio Ponti, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Adolf Loos, as well as by hundreds of neglected architects.
 
The photos are presented as paper prints in simple aluminium frames. They are divided into typological sections, allowing us to examine the range of formal designs in Modernist architecture and analyse contexts and changes in the development of 20th century architecture and design throughout the world. Inspired by the work of Hilla and Bernd Becher, in this project Adam Štěch systematically records formal differences and similarities within the Modernist movement.

The exhibition installation was designed by Matěj Činčera and Jan Kloss who run OKOLO Collective with Adam Štěch.

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Curator: Rainald Franz, Curator, MAK Glass and Ceramics Collection

Language: The tour is held in German.
Duration: 30 min.
Tour fee: € 3 + admission to the museum
Admission every Tuesday 6–9 pm
€ 8
€ 7.50 online
Meeting point: MAK Columned Main Hall
No registration necessary