April 24, 2024
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Summary of approved PhD theses

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Late Modernism in the Slovak Spa Localities
Mgr. art. Martin Zaiček, PhD.

Slovakia is a small-size country rich in natural healing water springs. These springs are an important predisposition for the spa development. But natural resources themselves cannot provide spa services. For providing of the therapy, there is needed a complex of balneology and sanatoriums, which all together with the nature create spa environment. In the second half of the 20th century, Slovak spa localities were the setting for the massive construction development, which had to enhance Slovak spas into the best world quality. According to this, we can observe here a complex of tens of realized objects, built in the aesthetics of the late modern architecture. The most of the objects are nowadays still in use in the original shape and provide the crucial part of the spa services in Slovakia. The spa development in the period of 60’s until 80’s of the 20th century was both, financially and technically, a complicated process that was organized by a centralized spa organization Slovakoterma Bratislava. This spa company was an important partner of the projection institute Zdravoprojekt. This was responsible for the projection of the most of realized post-war concepts in the Slovak spa localities. In 1966, a specialized projection company Zdravoprojekt Bratislava (health-project) was founded, which from the very beginning had a studio 03 responsible for the architectural projection for the spas. The director and the founder architect Viktor Uhliarik put together a team of tens of architects, among others Richard Pastor, Ján Fibinger, Jaroslav Vítek, as well as young architecture graduates Jozef Schuster and Christo Tursunov. Those architects became leading personalities for the next 26 years of the Zdravoprojekt existence, whose architectural ideas were realized in many built objects of the health care infrastructure and spa recreation.

Transformation of Informal Settlements in Kabul (Afghanistan)
Ing. arch. Mirwais Fazli, PhD. 

Afghanistan may well be the most rapidly urbanizing country in Asia, according to the World Bank and United Nation Development Program statistics. Kabul as one of the fast-growing cities has witnessed rapid urbanization with the many inevitable challenges, including the manifestation of informal settlements. Rapid migration and vast urban expansion have contributed to large informal settlements in Kabul city. After the collapse of Taliban regime in 2001, there was an influx of refugees returning, and a rural urban migration process made the growth of urbanization rate much faster. The population of Kabul as the capital city of Afghanistan has increased four times since 2001. Post-war refugees, the return of internally displaced residents to the city, and rural migration are some causal factors. This, in addition to limited planning capacity of the government to meet the high demand for building plots, has led to the growth of the informal settlements. This directly influenced the insufficiency of infrastructure and urban services and increased the rapid growth of informal settlements. This research focuses on how to improve the current chaotic urbanization, and to establish some degree of infrastructure, one approach is the country wide upgrading of informal settlements to through land readjustment process. The case study is an informal part of district 5th of Kabul city with a 23 ha area in the west of Kabul city. A land readjustment concept plan has been drafted for this area. Over this drafted plan physical and social infrastructure has been demonstrated and analyzed. Findings of this paper propose a solution for the problems of this unplanned area in Kabul, which is readjusting of unplanned area by a self-supporting process. This process does not need governmental budget and can be applied by government, private sectors and landowner associations. Furthermore, by implementing the Land Readjustment Process, conceptual plans can be built for unplanned areas, maximum facilities can be brought to the residents’ urban life, improving the environment for the users’ benefit, the transport system and economic status (the value of land increases due to infrastructure availability and land legalization). In addition to all these benefits for the public, we can raise the revenue of government by collecting the taxes from landowners. This process is implemented in most of countries of the world, it was implemented for the first time in Germany and after that in most cities of Japan as well, and is known as one of the effective process for infrastructural development. To sum up, the notable characteristic of the Land Readjustment Process is that it works on the concept of mutual interest, in which both landowners and government take advantage. Though in this process, the engagement of community is very important and without public cooperation this process can face the failure.

Architecture of School of Architecture
Ing. arch. Jana Fečkaninová, PhD. 

Dissertation thesis “Architecture of Schools of Architecture” addresses the issue of a spatial context of Schools of Architecture buildings with regard to their institutional character and forms of teaching. The institutional architecture as well as the physical architecture of the school building are researched. In intersection of these two phenomena studies arise various spatial forms of schools, considering both – their architectural image and spatial requirements that result from different use of a school building and understanding of its functionally identical units. The topic targets the expression of the internal system of the school on its physical shape. For research, there were selected best globally well-respected European schools of architecture with as many mutually different and unique teaching systems and at the same time unique buildings as possible. The aim of this work is to outline the understanding of the ideal school of architecture of our time and identify tendencies and future development trends of architectural schools.

Keywords: architecture, doctoral study, research, design, PhD study, doctoral theses, urban design