Martina Mertová: Šumperák (lecture)

Šumperák, the house that has such an unmistakable form that it is recognised by both architecture fans and complete laypersons, will be introduced by an architectural historian Martina Mertová. When exploring its story, she uncovered curious twists in the history of Czech architecture that had been hidden in shades. This building, hated, disdained but also admired, had flooded Czechoslovakia in a twenty years’ time. The author of the original plan, copied more than 4,000 times, was an engineer from Šumperk, Josef Vaněk. What stood behind his initiative and how did he gain such phenomenal success? Is he the only father of the famous šumperák?

Martina Mertová (*1978) studied art history at Palacký University, Olomouc. She focuses on the history of architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries. She used to work as a preservationist specialising in modern architecture; later she became a curator of the architecture collection in The Museum of Modern Art in Olomouc. She writes about both contemporary and modern architecture and is the co-author of the books Slavné vily Olomouckého kraje (2007), SIAL (2010), Naprej! Česká sportovní architektura 1567–2012 (2012), Bilance. Umění ve veřejném prostoru Olomouce v letech 1945–1989 (2016) or Růžena Žertová. Architektka domů i věcí (2016). She is active in the civic association Za krásnou Olomouc and is a mother of three. Last year she wrote an art-history study for the photographic concept of Tomáš Pospěch, Šumperák.

Photo: Tomáš Pospěch