Bohumil Sláma

Architect Bohumil Sláma was one of the leading representatives of Czech modern architecture who designed public buildings mostly for provincial towns. Between 1905 and 1911, he studied architecture at the Prague Technical University. At the end of his studies, he met Bedřich Feuerstein and Antonín Raymond, members of the newly formed Student Association of Architecture Students who advocated the reform of teaching architecture at the university and looked up to the progressive school of architecture at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague led by Jan Kotěra. Bedřich Feuerstein and Antonín Raymond became Sláma’s friends, colleagues, and inspiration. Shortly before the war, Sláma also taught at the university, so his young colleagues were his students for a short time.[1]

Before the outbreak of WWII, Sláma made a good impression with his design of a salon, published in Architektonický obzor.[2] Between 1915 and 1916, he took part in several competitions: for a hotel and insurance company in Mnichovo Hradiště, a school in Radvanice, an orphanage in Prague–Krč, a school in Prague–Smíchov. 

Bohumil Sláma also wrote articles, occasionally contributing to magazine Architektonický obzor and other periodicals. In Architektonický obzor, he published a text entitled K otázce druhého českého divadla v Praze (On the Issue of the Second Czech Theatre in Prague) in 1918:[3]: “I think the National Theatre should be used [only] for smaller operas and spectacular plays. For grand operas with special guests, for Smetana’s cycle etc., a new opera building and a building for more intimate dramas should be built.” Dejvice and Vinohrady seemed too far from the city centre although Sláma predicted a great development in these city quarters in the future: they would become “a new centre of city life”.[4] According to Sláma, a plot of land in the city centre should be used for the new theatre and he even prepared a conceptual design of the building on the corner of Lazarská and Jungmannova Streets, where the palace of the Mining and Metallurgical Company, designed by Josef Říha, was built later.

In early 1920s, Sláma designed residential buildings, for example, houses in Ořechovka, his own house no. 424 in Prague–Bubeneč, and tenement houses no. 1736–1739 in Prague–Vinohrady. In 1922, he collaborated with Bedřich Feuerstein on the design of the purist crematorium in Nymburk which became one of his most important projects. The intersections of elementary stereometrical volumes – rectangular floor plans and massive cylinders and a half-cylinders – and smooth façade surfaces do not give up upon proportions and spatial relationships common in classical architecture. According to historian of architecture Helena Čapková, Feuerstein and Sláma’s project for Nymburk showed their knowledge of current trends abroad: “The crematorium seems to be an interpretation of neoclassical, Enlightenment architecture of French architects Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, instructed by Russian constructivism.” At the same time, Čapková does not exclude the impact of the “Eastern” tradition, saying that Feuerstein and Sláma could not escape the contemporary debate about the relationship between “western” and “eastern” architecture: “Between the wars, the prevailing opinion was that the entasis of pillars in Japanese Buddhist temples, namely in Hōryū-temple, actually had its model in the classical architecture of ancient Greece.”[5]

At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, Sláma designed of a number of important public buildings. In his project of the Scout Palace no. 674 in Prague’s New Town, he showed his knowledge of current trends of avant-garde architecture and multi-function metropolitan palaces. He also designed the Church of the Divine Heart of Jesus in Hradec Králové, conceptually based on the constructivist principles by Auguste Perret. At the same time, Sláma designed the post office in Kladno and the palace of the Czechoslovak Radio in Prague–Vinohrady, no. 1409, with strip windows and the receding fifth floor. After that, he designed more post offices, e.g. in Vršovice and Střešovice. He also designed schools in Náchod, Dobřany, Králíky and Rožnov near České Budějovice. [6]

In 1948, Bohumil Sláma joined Ladislav Machoň, Čeňek Mužík and Jan Rejchl and founded the East Bohemian nationalized architecture organization, which later became Stavoprojekt. He worked on major infrastructure and landscape projects but shortly after 1949, he retired. [7]

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