"The thing was that I had a two-year contract at the academy and after two years, if they wanted to fire me, they would have an easy time because the bursar would not sign a new contract. And nobody knew what was going to be there. So it didn't occur to me, because I wasn't thinking about any contracts at that time, and I had so many friends there at that time, Bradacek, the rector was a sculptor, and Bradacek and I were friends, everything was so chummy, so I didn't feel that anybody wanted to fire me. But somebody there told me that I was really in danger of being done, that they might do it, and that I should be an associate professor, and then it wouldn't be valid, associate professors are there for a long time. It wasn't out of my head, it wasn't. Someone completely randomly, I think it was Čeněk Lysický, who was there with Fišárek, and when Fišárek died, he had this problem, I think he tipped me off. So at that time I consulted with the architect Pechar how to do it, because I didn't know. He said that somebody had to write me a recommendation, and then based on that, it was dealt with. Now I don't know who wrote the recommendation and then it went through the formal channels. I had a habilitation file, they don't have that otherwise, they have to have that recommendation if you don't have anything. Artists, like Bradáček, didn't have any files. They were just good, they had realizations and they had an interview and they were associate professors. And I had a file, and even in that I was the first at that school. So I submitted the file, and then based on that, there was a defense, and it took two years for that to happen."
"A competition design of this magnitude cannot be done by one person, it is not humanly possible. Back then there was no internet, no computer, everything was done by hand, we drew huge plans. So Dagmara with the drawing, there were two of us, it was impossible to divide it. But the fact is that the architectural ideas were really mine. Especially the final one, where I literally made a paper model on my knee, at the last minute, and now I saw that the two masses that we had there, that we wanted to stretch it like a terrace and end with a ramp, and that way it would get closer to the future square that was supposed to be there, and it's not. And the competition proposal for that just won, that there was the idea of people being able to walk through there, to tie the whole thing together. So I can say that those were my thoughts, the interiors as well. But we split some of the things, Dagmar did some of the things, when the office interiors were drawn, she drew the inside. So some of it was done together and some of it we had split roles, but it suited the fact that we each had a different focus, so I think it was good for the job."
She was born on 20 November 1939 in Jičín into the family of Josef and Zdenka Božena Smítek. She graduated from the eleven-year high school (today Lepař Gymnasium) and after graduation in 1957 she began to study architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague. After graduating in 1963, she joined the studio of architect Karel Prager at the Regional Design Institute in Prague. In 1964, she won the first prize (with co-author Dagmar Šestáková) in the competition for the Energy Building in Prague Vršovice. The competition design and subsequent project was selected in 1966 for the construction of the headquarters of the foreign trade companies Chemapol and Investa. In 1966, she was admitted to the Faculty of Architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague as an assistant to Professor František Cubr, with whom she collaborated on the design for the 1967 Expo in Montréal. In 1966-1970 she collaborated with the Italian contractor FEAL on the construction of the Chemapol-Investa building. In 1968, she transferred with František Cubr to the School of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she worked until 1990. In 1974 she won the first prize in the architectural competition for the Memorial to the Czech State in the St. George’s Rotunda on Mount Říp (realised in 1979). She collaborated with František Cubr on the National Gallery exhibition in the Jiří Monastery and the interior design of the Intercontinental Hotel in Prague, among other projects. After the death of František Cubr in 1976, she continued to work on the completion of the exposition in the Jiří Monastery and additional installations of the National Gallery (1976-1986). In 1980 she was appointed as the first woman associate professor at the Academy of Fine Arts on the basis of the thesis “The Work of Art in Contemporary Environmental Design”. Since 1980 she has been exhibiting her paintings. In 1983, she developed a scenario for the use of the relocated dean’s church in Most and in 1985-1988 she continued with a project for the spatial design of the interior in the form of a gallery exhibition of old North Bohemian art. In 1991-1996 she worked as head of the architecture department at the Private School of Art Design in Prague. Since 1997 she has been teaching at the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, CTU in Prague. In 2018 she received the Jože Plečnik Award for her lifetime contribution to Czech architecture. She continuously exhibits her paintings at collective and solo exhibitions. In 2024 she lived in Prague-Řeporyje.
Grandmother Zdenka Cikánková (sitting on the right with a book) with her mother and three sisters. She is holding the book as a sign that she is the only one of her sisters going to college to support her mother and sisters after her father's death. But the sisters all got married, and grandma worked as a teacher after her studies
Grandmother Zdenka Cikánková (sitting on the right with a book) with her mother and three sisters. She is holding the book as a sign that she is the only one of her sisters going to college to support her mother and sisters after her father's death. But the sisters all got married, and grandma worked as a teacher after her studies
