Jurkovič House

The Jurkovič House Website - click here.

Jana Nečase 2, 616 00 Brno-Žabovřesky

T +420 532 169 501 / +420 773 773 616
jurkovic@moravska-galerie.cz

It is recommended to book guided tours online. A guided tour of the Jurkovič House can be booked via the booking form here.

Guided tours of the Jurkovič House take place every hour, in accordance with opening hours.

Opening hours

January-February Saturday-Sunday 10-12 am and 12.30-6 pm
March Thursday-Sunday 10-12 am and 12.30-6 pm
April-October Tuesday-Sunday 10-12 am and 12.30-6 pm
November Thursday-Sunday 10-12 am and 12.30-6 pm
December Saturday-Sunday 10-12 am and 12.30-6 pm

Current Exhibition: Herrmann & Coufal: Design In You

The Jurkovič Villa is among the many fine examples of architecture created in Brno around the beginning of the 20th century. Together with buildings to Jurkovič's designs in Pustevny, Luhačovice and the Nové Město nad Metují chateau, it makes up the nucleus of his surviving work in the Czech Republic. What the Tugendhat Villa did for functionalism in Brno, the Jurkovič Villa does for art nouveau architecture.

Dušan Samo Jurkovič (1868 - 1947) spent the major part of his active life in Slovakia. However, he was a leading light of Czech architecture around the turn of the 19th century, ranking with Jan Kotěra. At the beginning of the 20th century, Jurkovič designed several buildings for Brno investors, although his most remarkable work in the city was his own villa, designed and built in 1906. It was situated at Jana Nečase 2, on a woodland slope above the River Svratka, at the edge of what was the village of Žabovřesky, now a Brno municipality. The construction embodies much of Jurkovič's architectural knowledge and experience and expresses his concept of a model villa. The design owes much to the English Art and Crafts movement, with particular emphasis on a traditional housing style together with a combination of free and applied arts. Jurkovič arrived at this original paraphrase of the English villa largely thanks to his existing experience with crafts; furthermore, it reflected his training under Camille Sitte in Vienna, developed by study of the work of Edgar Wood, C.R. Mackintosh and, in particular, H.M. Baillie-Scott (his House and Garden essay was published in Czech in 1910 by Laichter Publishing).

The way in which the villa is set in the landscape is a virtuoso feat of architecture, something that stamped Jurkovič's lasting reputation for sympathy with nature and sensitivity to it. Even today, the location is a popular destination for outings, with woods, the river and splendid panoramas. Jurkovič himself obviously enjoyed similar pleasures; he built a boathouse that he and his friends used on the bank of the nearby Svratka. The villa was a milestone in the architect's work, demonstrating a shift in his style. He started largely to abandon his initial imitations of wooden folk buildings, of which the only influence remaining is limited to the basic framework.

In the light of his Luhačovice construction experience, Dušan Jurkovič opted for a half-timbered frame covered with insulating cork panels, cemented from the outside and plastered from the inside. In accord with the frame, he tried to simplify the building elements to the maximum: the final visual effect is chiefly provided by white walls, while traditional folk elements became geometrical reductions. A novel feature was a stone arcade entrance with a terrace. In terms of layout, the villa is divided into a reception area near the entrance and a social section on the ground floor including the architect's own exhibition hall, a working section on the first floor, and private premises on both the ground floor and the first floor. The hall serves as a unifying element. Jurkovič employed these principles, applied in the villa for the first time, in his further work, such as the reconstruction of the Nové město nad Metují chateau and the Zbraslav monastery, as well as in residential buildings in Brno and elsewhere (the B. Škarda tenement house and others).¨