Juraj Závodný – Solitaires With Emotion

Juraj Závodný (1960) belongs to a group of architects who perceive their work as a complex activity. He designs houses and interiors, draws brilliantly and produces furniture solitaires. He reminds me of the distinctive generation of architects of the early 20th century, who significantly influenced not only buildings but also their internal division and equipment — design. The tradition of architects who perceive both external and internal space in a very complex way is rich. Their thumbprint is mostly easily identifiable and unmistakable, whether we look at buildings, villas, designs, or furniture. In the designs and realizations of houses and interior objects, Juraj Závodný is, willy-nilly, a continuer of such a tradition, even when craft work was replaced by factory production.

Juraj Závodný studied at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava at the Faculty of Architecture between 1979 and 1984. At the time, graduates of Vojtech Vilhan and Dušan Kuzma at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava presented themselves to the public in the SFVU  Gallery at Michalská Street 7 in Bratislava (1985) with a group exhibition called Studio ‘85. Imro Vaško, Dušan Voštenák, Jana Antalová, Ivan Kepko, Miroslav Zigmund, Dana Mušecová and Jozef Gašparík entered the short history of postmodernism in Slovakia with this exhibition.  In the Czech Republic, a little later, there was a well-known group of architects Atika (1987 – 1992): Jiří Pelcl, Bohuslav Horák, Jaroslav Šusta, Jiří Javůrek, Vít Cimbura, Vlastimil Vagaday. This interesting episode emerged in our territory with a time shift compared to other European countries. It was a reaction to the boring mass-pro duced furniture in every household or office space. Both groups worked with exceptional emotions when creating their prototypes.

They worked with various materials available at the time, mixed styles and colours, and the result was striking. It was more of a craft work — a solitaire rather than a real design suitable for mass production.

Juraj Závodný has among his solitaires several such cabinets that would be comparable to them even if they were created later. Immediately after college, he worked in the Engineering and Project Organization of School Buildings. After a short time, he was asked to work as a co- author in the team that participated in the competition for a theatre in Košice at the State Research Design and Typification Institute (ŠPTU,  1984 – 1989), where this commission was to be carried out. ŠPTU was a workplace that was extremely receptive to the personal activities of its architects, who designed their own projects after work. Even before the Gentle Revolution in 1989, many architects worked on a so-called free lance basis through commissions of the Slovak Fund of Fine Arts (SFVU). Even then, Juraj Závodný collaborated with his colleague Jozef  Ondriáš, and in 1989, they founded the Free A.R.T. studio (Ivan Sádovský, Jozef Ondriáš, Juraj Závodný, and Dušan Fischer also  collaborated in the beginning). One of the first commissions was the interior of the Lauda Air travel agency (Hotel Fórum in Bratislava). Juraj Závodný designed two upholstered wooden chairs — armchairs for visitors — On a Ona (1989), stylishly conceived in the spirit of  postmodernism. The studio was located in Stupava, where a car pentry workshop was established in former fruit warehouses, which allowed Juraj to devote himself more intensively to furniture design.