Architect Dedeček called himself 'a carpenter in the age of concrete'

While walking along the Danube embankment flanking Bratislava’s old town, a distinctive set of three turned prisms elevated above the street and connecting two wings of a Baroque building draws the attention of passers-by. This modern structure, called the Bridge (Premostenie), strongly contrasts with its historical surroundings and is the flagship of an extension of the Slovak National Gallery (SNG) dating from the 1970s. It is faithful to the Brutalist style in which architect Vladimír Dedeček (1929-2020) designed it in the late 1960s.  

The architect, who died in 2020, did not live to see either the completion of the recent, award-winning refurbishment of the SNG’s premises completed in 2022 or the current exhibition about the Bridge itself and his oeuvre – which is being held in the Bridge itself. 

“I’ve always seen an exhibition dedicated to Vladimír Dedeček’s work as a professional obligation for the gallery – albeit a pleasant one,” Alexandra Kusá, the former SNG general director, under whose curatorial leadership the project was carried out, said in early October. “We planned to launch it soon after the gallery’s reconstruction, specifically in the Bridge, as it felt only fitting.” 

Monika Mitášová, external curator and co-author of a book about Dedeček from 2017, said that they aimed to show that he was a very original person who could turn his daily struggle into a dance, into creative architectural solutions.