Lubomír a Čestmír Šlapetovi

Lubomír Šlapeta was an architect, furniture designer, and urban planner. Together with his brother Čestmír, he studied at the State Industrial School in Brno and subsequently, between 1928 and 1930, at the Academy of Fine Arts in the German city of Breslau (now Wrocław) under Hans Scharoun and Adolf Rading. In 1930–⁠1931, the brothers undertook a study tour of France and the United States, where they became acquainted with the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. On their return, they established the studio Akademičtí architekti Šlapetové (Šlapeta Academic Architects). They initially opened branches in Prague and Moravská Ostrava, but in 1933 closed the Prague office and worked together in Moravská Ostrava until 1936. That year, Lubomír moved to Olomouc, where he opened his own studio in September and started a family the following year.
Čestmír married in 1936 and remained in Moravská Ostrava, working as an architect and collaborating with his brother on selected projects. In the late 1940s, he was assigned to the Ostrava Stavoprojekt state design institute, but after disputes with the company’s communist leadership (notably of the Hotel Ostrava project), he was forced in the 1950s to leave architecture and started working as an acoustician. In the 1960s, he emigrated to West Germany.
From 1936, Lubomír worked as an architect in Olomouc and the wider region (Přerov, Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, etc.). He was among the founding figures of Palacký University in Olomouc, but was forced to leave after the communist coup of February 1948. Although he continued working freelance, his expulsion from the Union of Architects in the 1950s limited his opportunities. In the late 1960s, he briefly joined his former teacher Hans Scharoun’s studio in West Berlin.
The brothers’ most significant work was produced in the 1930s, when they advanced the principles of functionalism both in its rational form and in the spirit of organic architecture. This is evident in their early detached houses in Místek (now Frýdek-Místek) as well as in more ambitious villas in Ostrava, Hlučín, Frýdlant nad Ostravicí, and elsewhere. Their most notable building from this period is the functionalist villa designed for JUDr. Eduard Liska in Slezská Ostrava (Čedičova Street 1406/8, 1935–⁠1936), which combines a rational layout with an organically conceived spatial
arrangement. The striking façade features a strip window and a conservatory on the south corner, set within a landscaped garden with a rockery and kidney-shaped pond overlooking the Ostravice River.
Many of the brothers’ designs remained unrealized, including their 1938 proposal for a cultural centre with a hotel and concert hall in Moravská Ostrava and a theatre for Český Těšín (1948). Lubomír’s unbuilt projects include a cultural centre with theatre in Jeseník (1946) and a theatre for Kroměříž (1947–⁠1953). Between 1948 and 1953, the brothers collaborated on an extension to the Imperial Hotel in Ostrava, then renamed Hotel Ostrava. However, the Stalinist leadership of Stavoprojekt had the design reworked by architect Zdeněk Alexa in the style of socialist realism. In the second half of the 1950s, Lubomír designed an adaptation of the interiors of the Ostravica department store (formerly Textilia) in Ostrava. He continued to design detached houses, theatres, cultural centres, and interior refurbishments. In the 1970s, he worked on an unrealized plan to remodel the State Scientific Library in Olomouc. One of his last projects was the Parish Church of St. Nicholas in Tichá near Frenštát, designed in line with the liturgical principles of the Second Vatican Council. The design competition took place in 1966–⁠1967, and the church was built between 1968 and 1976. Until his death, Lubomír continued adapting sacred buildings and interiors to meet new liturgical requirements.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Šlapeta brothers were leading figures of modern architecture in Moravia and Silesia, balancing the rational and organic strands of functionalism. Their work had a major influence on the development of Czechoslovak modernism, reflecting trends in international architectural centres. Under the communist regime, both were xxx-marginalized: they were banned from publishing, Čestmír was pushed out of architecture, and Lubomír was expelled from the Union of Architects. Despite these restrictions, Lubomír continued to create designs reflecting architecture in a broader European context, most notably the Church of St. Nicholas in Tichá, and maintained professional ties with West European architects, including his collaboration with Hans Scharoun in West Berlin from 1966 to 1970.

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