Jaromir Krejcar, technique’s apology. Czechoslovak pavilion at the International Exhibition, Paris 1937

Abstract

L’Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans les Temps Modernes in Paris (1937) offered, across the construction of their pavilions to each country the opportunity to materialize their technological progress and also to show socio-political factors referred to the art’s integration or aesthetic formalization of their ideologies. In the Czechoslovakian pavilion, made by the architect Jaromir Krejcar, crystallized architectural postulates from the purism, cubism, and new objectivity close to technical aspects driven by the russian constructivism that had been developed during the first decades of the twentieth century in the architecture of the new Czech Republic. Its geographical location, at the crossroads of Europe, had favored the knowledge of avant-garde movements of its two flanks: the Eastern Europe –France, Germany, Austria and Netherlands— on one hand, and the other the Soviet Union. This article will recognize the architectural thought of Krejcar’s generation across the decisions of the pavilion’s project. The characteristics of its emplacement, combined with the moral obligation of showing the high technological level of his country, managed to place it as one of the best examples of that exhibition. Its materialization represent the culmination of previous architectural researches in Czechoslovakia that were truncated from 1939 by the political circumstances.