Roman Brychta
Roman Brychta graduated from Emil Přikryl’s School of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1995. Until 2002, he collaborated with architect V. Králíček and others. In 2002, he co-founded the architectural practice Projektil architekti with his colleagues. Since 2011, he has been leading Studio of Architecture IV at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM), where he was appointed Professor in 2021. In 2020, he founded his own practice, Roman Brychta Architekti.
The studio’s defining characteristic is its openness to interdisciplinary collaboration and its understanding of architecture as a form of care for the places we inhabit. Its projects are based on open communication, in which all participants in the process have a clearly defined and, above all, responsible role. Roman Brychta is the recipient of two Czech National Architecture Awards.
Markéta Mráčková
Markéta Mráčková studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) and at Emil Přikryl’s School of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. During her studies, she also attended the Faculty of Architecture at RWTH Aachen University in Germany.
Barbora Šimonová
Barbora Šimonová studied at the Faculty of Architecture of Brno University of Technology, at Emil Přikryl’s School of Architecture, and in Anna Daučíková’s New Media Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. During her studies, she also attended the Universitat Politècnica de València and the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro.
Markéta Mráčková and Barbora Šimonová
Markéta Mráčková and Barbora Šimonová met while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and began working together as an artistic duo in 2013. In 2016, they founded the cultural cooperative cosa.cz to bring together their diverse activities in the fields of architecture, visual arts, literature and film.
Together, they received a scholarship to the School of Architecture at Tianjin University and completed artistic residencies in Rustavi, Kharkiv and Český Krumlov.
Since 2016, they have also been working on video portraits of buildings from the 1980s, which can be viewed at cosa.tv.
In 2020, they published the book Ahoj sestro, vítej v Číně (Hello Sister, Welcome to China), reflecting on their five-month stay in China.
They also occasionally explore the genre of architectural rap. Their songs Bude to bílý, černý nebo maximálně šedý (It Will Be White, Black or Grey at Most) and Baví vás to? Hlavně vás to musí bavit! (Are You Enjoying It? Above All, You Have to Enjoy It!) capture moments from the everyday professional practice of two female architects.
Svetlana Devyatkina
Svetlana Devyatkina has gained experience in the field of architecture through studies at various institutions, including the Faculty of Art and Architecture at the Technical University of Liberec (TUL), an exchange programme at ENSA Nantes in France, and the School of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (ŠA AVU).
In 2022, she received her Master's degree from UMPRUM with her diploma project Wasted Earth, supervised by Prof. Roman Brychta. Through this project, she explored the transformation of urban landscapes as a consequence of construction activities. This work led her to her current research into the use of excavated waste soil in architecture, which she is pursuing at UMPRUM.
