Lecture | Kamil Roškot: “Architecture is not an instrument, architecture is a monument”
On Wednesday, 2 September 2026, Plečnik House will host Prof. Dr Vladimír Šlapeta, an exceptional authority on modern architecture and Plečnik’s legacy. This lecture will be dedicated to the Czech architect Kamil Roškot (1886–1945), one of the leading figures of Czech architecture between the two world wars.
Roškot was the eldest of the trio of Jan Kotěra’s most prominent students at the Prague Academy — alongside Jaromír Krejcar and Bohuslav Fuchs. As the architect of the theatre in Ústí nad Orlicí, the tomb of the Bohemian kings in St Vitus Cathedral in Prague, and the Czechoslovak State Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, he left an important mark on the architectural identity of the First Czechoslovak Republic.
The lecture’s title — “architecture is not an instrument, architecture is a monument” — offers a starting point for reflecting on Roškot’s architecture as something that reaches beyond the purely functional role of a building. His work reveals a search for monumentality, dignity and the symbolic power of modern architecture, particularly at a time when architecture played an important role in shaping the identity of a young state.
The lecture will also place Roškot within the broader Central European context, which indirectly intersects with Plečnik’s work. Both architects were active in Prague at a time when architecture was becoming an important means of cultural and state representation: Plečnik through his interventions at Prague Castle for President T. G. Masaryk, and Roškot through architectural projects connected with Czech history and national self-image, including his work in St Vitus Cathedral. Their work thus opens up the question of how modern architecture can be at once contemporary, commemorative and monumental.
About the lecturer:
Prof. Dr. Vladimír Šlapeta is a distinguished architectural historian and educator. He studied at the Czech Technical University in Prague and led the architectural collections at the National Technical Museum in Prague for many years. He also served as Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the CTU and later in Brno. Throughout his rich career, he has devoted himself to researching Modernism, especially the architecture of Adolf Loos and the generation of architects influenced by him.
The lecture, co-organised with the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana, will be held in English.
Registration is required at prijava@mgml.si or +386 1 24 12 506 (Mon–Fri, 9:00–15:00).
Admission is free.