"So, we made the two-wheel crane. When I finished making it, I started to look at how we were going to mount it on the top of the wall, because it's a cage crane that's suspended, so it's small. What I found out in the design process was that it was fully rotatable, so it turned out to be actually a very modern crane in concept. And we also hypothesised that it should actually, if it's cage-mounted, mount itself. That was at the full stage. Then I started thinking about it, and I came up with a procedure for how it could be self-supporting. And there was this nice experiment, where the crane pulled itself up by its own power to those thirty meters, there it fixed itself to the masonry casing, suspended on corbels. And it actually hung there, if I remember correctly, for almost two years. Three years even. It was used somehow, then it was just there, mounted, but it was used very hard for two years. And it proved to be a very functional and elegant device. What was such a revelation for me - I had suspected it, but there I confirmed for the first time that the solution of using this kind of historical machines that one makes to one's own specifications is, first of all, ecological. That's obviously when you make it from local sources. But secondly, it's much more flexible. When you have big technology, you are dependent on it: when it will be, how it will be, what it will be. But thirdly it's more economically viable - and significantly so."
"Before that changed, the way I was doing the night gatekeeper thing, I was probably doing the biggest moonlighting job a person could do in the socialist era. Because I was the night gatekeeper at the OPBH of Prague 1. So, I was in charge of locking and unlocking garbage men of the Old Town. That was amazing, we just strolled around the Old Town for five years. And it was this ridiculous structure that just acted... so they were saving space and they were grouping these block crews together. At first it was just little sections where there were two of them, where they would take turns, and they would group it and dilute it. Then there were four of us for that quarter of Prague 1 and we could afford...they let us serve once a week. We had weekly cycles. We did serve 16 hours, but at night - we could sleep there. And then we had three weeks off. I did what I liked to do on that time off, and that was outdoor sports, physical activities, ski mountaineering, climbing, that sort of thing."
"My parents are probably such a - I don't want to say 'special' and 'unique' - but certainly an interesting example, because they came together as first love and lived together until they died. So, it's a curious story. They met at a voluntary job after the war in Ostrava, at some union activity where they went... they went to help build the Ostrava steelworks. And my mother injured her cervical spine there when they threw a bag of cement on her shoulders to carry it. She was so delicate, quite fragile. So, she hurt her neck, and father took care of her somehow. And as he took care of her, they fell in love and that was that."
Petr Růžička was born on 9 September 1954 in Prague. His father, Karel Růžička, was one of the communist historians who sat on the so-called Barnabitská Commission in 1963. The Commission was tasked with reviewing the sentences of communists convicted in the fabricated trials of the 1950s. Among other things, this experience led Karel Růžička to denounce the occupation after 1968 and to leave his academic position and the Communist Party. Petr studied joinery at a higher school of applied art, but he was forbidden to study at university because of his father’s political reputation. He worked in various design institutes, and after an attempted emigration, from which he returned of his own free will, he ended up working as a night gatekeeper. Before the Velvet Revolution, he earned extra money by working in high-rise buildings. After the revolution he used this experience to repair the church tower in Slavonice. He moved from joinery to carpentry. Gradually he began to experiment with handwork and historical technologies and processes. He has worked for the revival of traditional carpentry in the Czech Republic, and with his construction company Ars Tignaria he used authentic methods in the repair of cultural monuments. Petr Růžička died on May 29th, 2023.
