Architekt Emil Belluš a jeho stavby ako pamiatky
The Architect Emil Belluš and his Protected Works

Summary/Abstract: Architect’s legacy is living its own life: it is formed by various unpredictable events and circumstances. Besides seemingly objective values – architectural constructions – it consists of intellectual heritage; its value and meaning depends on contemporary conditions. There are many shades between overall forgetting and formation of myths and legends. Even seemingly permanent value of preserved constructions is not a permanent certainty: they are liable to changes and use to fade away. What is a relation between being aware of the important architect’s legacy and being aware of the value of his constructions protected as monuments? In what way those constructions have been preserved? What have threatened them in connection with renovation and recent innovations that are common in contemporary architecture, but were not known in the past? We try to answer those questions in the paper dedicated to the important Slovak modern architect Emil Belluš. The year 2009 marks the 110th anniversary since Belluš was born (September 19, 1899, Slovenská Ľupča – December 14, 1979, Bratislava). He was one of the founders of modern architecture in Slovakia. His work has been constantly inspiring due to its balance of tradition and progress. Belluš’s work is a phenomenon specific for Slovakia; at the same time he is one of few vernacular architects who achieved international recognition. Belluš’s first projects stemmed from the traditional school and style of rondocubism (the National House in Banská Bystrica). Later, in the end of the 1920s – beginning of the 1930s his style of design changed to functionalism (for instance, the building of the Post Office and the Colonnade Bridge in Piešťany). In the second half of the 1930s he returned to tradition again and linked it with modern concepts in a remarkably cultivated way (for example, the building of the National Bank in Bratislava, today belonging to the Attorney Generalship). In Belluš’s industrial buildings functionality and artistic expression connect in an amazing harmonious way (the water mill and water reservoir in Trnava). His attempts to unite tradition with practical and symbolic functions during socialistic period are remarkable (for example, the school hostel Mladá Garda as well as unrealized project selected as a finalist in the competition for the Slavín Monument in Bratislava). Belluš’s pioneering activities in the sphere of stage settings are not well known. The last three decades of his life were not dedicated to architecture, but mainly to the organisational, pedagogical and scientific work. Emil Belluš achieved high level of recognition and respect among architects in Slovakia. Belluš’s constructions have also been protected as monuments: fifteen of his buildings are inscribed in the governmental list of monuments in Slovakia. Monument protection involves a problem of economy of energy.

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