Pepa receiving his diploma

My brother has graduated last month at Faculty of Information Technologies at Brno University of Technology and I shot some pictures there – of graduation ceremony and later of his faculty.

Pepa among the other graduate students

Graduate students and faculty staff like dean…

View to the new part with a big lobby

Pepa

Our family

Corridor between buildings

Fountain in the middle of courtyard

Motor of a lift

Exit sign

Door sign

Light

A study room

Faculty from a bird’s perspective – both buildings.

Detail of stairs

Bridge above the street connecting new building with monastery. Plus my grandpa

A school church

Place for bikes

Façade of the new building

Courtyard of the monastery

View from the new lobby

When I was in Brno last time, we visited also villa Tugndhat, one of the finest pieces of modern architecture. It was build in 1930 by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It became the icon of the modern architecture style functionalism that was quite popular here between wars. Nowadays, the villa is a part of UNESCO World Heritage (since 2001).

View to the windows of the main living area

Unfortunately, the villa is in very bad condition. The city wants it to be repaired, the project is finished, and was about to start in june, but as usually, they got wrong the process of doing the competition for the project, so the project ended at court, and they must do the competition for the project once again. F* lawyers, and f* city. They spent incredible 10 000 000 CZK (about €400 000) for project for reconstruction. This is not a normal price, and I don’t believe that there was not something in behind. And this money are lost now. I think that somebody in the town hall should be punished.

The villa will be reconstructed, but nobody knows when.

The reconstruction will be, indeed very expensive. The materials are mostly expensive materials from all around the world. There are also some incredible jewels. The villa cost a few millions CZK which was incredible amount before WW2. A normal house could be build for a price of hundred thousand CZK.

Dining area

We couldn’t take pictures inside the villa, so I have just some from outside. However, the inside is incredible. Clean space, everything made just for the villa. The space is huge, and the technology was the best at the time.

View inside the villa. Taken thru the window.

The villa had three floors. The top floor which is in the same level as the road above the villa (the villa is in the hill) was used as private living area. It had some atypical stuff inside like furniture that is put inside the walls which was not known at the time. And so on. However, nowadays it is almost empty, no furniture was left.

However, I think the best was the second floor. There was one big common open space room divided just by partial walls. The whole room had full glass windows on two sides, and on one side, there was also a winter garden. Some of the windows could be put down by electrical mechanism. In this open space, there was a library, working room, resting area, and dining part. Everything divided by partial walls.

Park

I also didn’t mention the garden, or I should tell a small park bellow the villa. It used to be twice or three times bigger extending to the bellow street, but during the time it was divided, and some houses were build in the bottom part.

Also I should provide some links:

• Official site
• Wikipedia

Winter garden

Lighting

>

Garage

The main staircase

Overlook of Brno

After not a very long time, I was again in Brno. This time I came to the game developers conference which was promoted by Pavel, and during the day we went to Moravská Galerie to see bienale exhibition.

Tomáš

Then there were some posters and logos.

Street art was just bellow the roof.

Street art

A lot of books.

On the next picture, there is a nice example how to make a book cover. When you shuffle a little with the plastic striped cover, you will uncover different text.

The holes in the paper were so fine that we couldn’t believe that it is possible to make them.

Reading…

The last thing we saw was quite funny exhibition of some authors from Slovakia. They were presenting Slovakian national symbols in very funny way which is very unique, because when you think about the nationalism in Slovakia, you ask yourself were they really our eastern neighbours?

Castle Špilberk

So to finish my trip to Brno, I should publish some more pictures. Brno is not really impressing with the architecture, but it has a lot of (more than Prague) modern buildings. One of the most striking functionalism architecture is Villa Tugendhat, now even in UNESCO world heritage

Vila Tugendhat

The thing where Brno is lagging behind Prague is public transportation. Brno apparently needs some kind of metro. Trams seems to be full all the time, unlike in Prague where they are only half empty all time time except rush hours. The fact that Brno needs metro is well known for a long time, but since metro is extremely expensive, it doesn’t seem like it is a question of a near future.

This is not crocodile! This is a dragon – according to the history

Panorama of Brno

Petrov

Fortress Špilberk

Horse at theatre Husa na Provázku

Actually as you might have noticed in the first picture, there was an error – I missed one photo when shooting the panorama. I patched it somehow in Photoshop, but I want to make it even better. Waiting for some suggestions, specially from Daniel from Madrid who helped me with the mosque in Casablance, and he thinked of how to fill the empty space in the photos. So hopefully I will fix it even better…

Courtyard of the monastery

This post should had been here before the wine tasting in Buchlovice, but guys in Brno were quite nervous about not having themselves on internet, so I had to calm down, and postpone this report. So this post will be about faculty where my brother studies – Faculty of Information Technologies at Technical University in Brno.

Courtyard of the monastery, and my brother on the side

You know, there is quite a tension between Prague as a capital city and Brno as the second largest city in the Czech republic. People from Prague are hated everywhere, specially here in Morava, and nobody can ever forget about Prague-centric orientation of everything in this country. People are not upset that everything of political importance is in Prague. But that politicians living in Prague has almost never been outside of Prague, and they don’t care about the rest of the country. This sadly doesn’t apply only to politicians, but also to ordinary people as well. Some of my friends don’t know that some places in our country even exist! The short view of people from Prague is just incredible. Everything on the east from Prague is Balcany for them.

View from the side of cafeteria

And I have to say that the same view is in my school. I think that my school should actually shut up, and be jealous what do they have in Brno. Not only that Brno is more famous in the computer science in the country – there is also quite good Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University, but both campuses (VUT and MU) are way, way better than our campus. Also there is not that much political tension at our faculty – specially after what we have seen in the last week where dean of our faculty called out head of our department after they proposed a new faculty of informatics at ČVUT. There is a lot more to say about this, but I gave up to even think about it. I just want to finish the school, and get off to the life.

Corridor

So back to the point. At FIT VUT, they have a brand new campus. It is in the place of an old monastery with some new buildings. They even have an old baroque church, although it doesn’t serve to it’s original purpose anymore. I was pretty impressed, the campus is the best one I have ever seen. They have lot of space, students can spend free time between classes in school, unlike we (we don’t have a single room for students, chairs in the corridors are full all the time…).

Bridge between monastery, and new buildings

The campus has also nice architecture – although built on the base of old monastery, it really looks really modern, and looks like it is done by one architect with unified style around the whole campus. Really nicely done.

A new hall in the monastery

I have to note also that they have a good menza. Unlike at ČVUT it doesn’t suck. It looks like it is here for students, and not to make money on students. They also have a normal restaurant one floor downstairs, but with prices for students. But the fact is that in Brno it is not like in Prague where you are just squeezed when you want to go to eat out. In Brno all restaurants are much cheaper, and I would say much better. I’m not really happy with the quality of eating out in Prague. Here you just eat either good and very expensive or bad and expensive. Of course, some exceptions still apply, but in general it is like that. And with the restaurant in the school with special deals for students, the situation in Brno is even better!

Two teachers looking for something at the fountain

I think Prague’s universities, specially our, should learn a lot in Brno. At first, there is no progress. Pointing out that we are an old institution, and not driving it anywhere is not good situation. Really, nowadays the school is referring to the old tradition, and is not willing to change anything in the old structures. And secondly the ability to give students some space in school is super important. This is not only to give them space to be in school between classes. To give them space where you can create something, to give them motivation. All these things are missing here in Prague…

When I think there are just two great things in Prague – some great teachers, and the ability to go abroad with Erasmus or some other programme very easily. Also multicultural atmosphere in Prague makes a lot.

One of the new pavilons

Last weekend I went to Brno to visit my friends there. The visit had two purposes – birthday of Pavel and Crackonosh, and the second was that Pavel just returned from Kenya where he had spent three weeks during Christmas. He got so lucky to escape this Christmas craziness, and I was feeling so jealous.

Pavel

Raďa

Petr

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What the fuck is this?!

Lilbox

Statue in the center of Brno

Some object in the middle of the Masaryk square

View to Petrov

Doesn’t this look like in Málaga?