(b Brno, 18 Dec 1871; d Prague, 17 April 1923). Czech architect and designer. He graduated from the Industrial College, Pilsen (now Plzen), and then became a pupil and colleague of Otto Wagner at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna. He won the Prix de Rome for his diploma project, an ideal town at the French end of the channel tunnel, and spent 1897 studying in Italy. He returned to Prague in 1898 and was appointed Professor of Architecture at the Academy of Applied Arts. His early work was influenced by the Viennese Secession and he designed the first Secession-style building in Prague, the Peterka house (1899). His pavilion for the Auguste Rodin Exhibition (1902), Prague, and a number of tomb designs were also in the Secession style. However, in his family villas of the early 1900s, such as the Trmal and Sucharda villas in Prague and the Mácha villa at Bechyne, there was a gradual but distinct development from the ideas of the Secession, with a new, rationalist understanding of space and compositional techniques and with ornament based more on the natural, plastic properties of the building materials than on the use of motifs from nature. This period culminated with his National House (1905–7) in Prostejov.

• Kotera, Jan
  • Sucharda, Stanislav
  • assistants
    • Janák, Pavel
  • collaboration
    • Stursa, Jan
  • groups and movements
    • Mánes Union of Artists
    • Siebenerklub
  • pupils
    • Bens, Adolf
    • Fuchs, Bohuslav
    • Krejcar, Jaromír
    • Novotny, Otakar
    • Roskot, Kamil
  • teachers
    • Gocár, Josef
  • works
    • Bosnia and Herzegovina, §I: Architecture
    • Czech Republic, §II, 3: Architecture, 1780s and after
    • Czech Republic, §V, 5: Interior decoration and furniture, 20th century
    • Czech Republic, §VII, 3: Glass, after c 1900
    • Czech Republic, §XI: Patronage
    • Novy Svet
    • Prague, §I, 3: History and urban development, after 1784
    • Prague, §III, 1: Centre of glass production