Urban and architectonic study of cultural centre in Koprivnice, Czech Republic. Study is concerning the possible usage and transformation of actual buildings built in 1990´s. The aim of proposal is to use the existing, simplify the complicated, complete the existing. The design offers a transformation of actual culturaly-educational facility into a new centre appropriate to needs of present inhabitants. Community centre is cleared out from unrelated functions and gets a clear definition of a place where cultural, musical and theatrical events take place. After possible developement evaluation of Tatra factory (done in pre-diploma project) is the Tatra museum situated newly behind the city municipal office building. There it stimulates actualy arising brownfield. New proposed museum building contents a mediatheque. The mediatheque aims on community functions in the city presented by atrium as a meeting place.

The locality is situated on the Veselá street in the historic centre near to Besední dům – the main seat of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra. The site adjacent to the unfinished housing estates was chosen in a competition authority in 2003 primarily thanks to the position next to Besední dům. I tried to create a variant solution which could offer insight into the issue. The aim was to design a functional, operationally and economically less demanding object where the hall has excellent acoustics for classical orchestral music with a capacity of about 1000 visitors.

There is a gap in our field regarding leisure research on specific ethnic groups. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the experience of leisure and of involvement in the First Chinese Senior Association of Vaughan (FCSAV) for Chinese adults aged 50 to 65 years who have been living in Canada for at least five years. As this is a phenomenological study, the main focus is on the meanings and experiences of these participants. Purposeful sampling methods were used to find participants who fit the study criteria of being a Chinese immigrant from Mainland China and/or Hong Kong, living in Canada for at least five years, between the ages of 50 to 65, a member of the First Chinese Senior Association of Vaughan, and participating in at least one activity at the Centre at the time of interview. Altogether, 13 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted over two weeks in July 2010. Five main essences were developed from the analysis of the interview data: changing leisure with changing culture; achieving and maintaining health; experiencing freedom and choice; cultural expression and cultural learning; and feeling a sense of community. Interestingly, there was also an overarching theme of leisure as an essential component to life. These findings exemplify the great value Chinese immigrants place upon leisure as they experienced it at the FCSAV as well as its connection to holistic health. Also, leisure at the club was described as a site for cultural expression and the development of community. Overall, implications of this study will be of most value to recreation practitioners and researchers by allowing for greater cultural sensitivity in developing and enhancing programs for this specific group.

There is a gap in our field regarding leisure research on specific ethnic groups. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the experience of leisure and of involvement in the First Chinese Senior Association of Vaughan (FCSAV) for Chinese adults aged 50 to 65 years who have been living in Canada for at least five years. As this is a phenomenological study, the main focus is on the meanings and experiences of these participants. Purposeful sampling methods were used to find participants who fit the study criteria of being a Chinese immigrant from Mainland China and/or Hong Kong, living in Canada for at least five years, between the ages of 50 to 65, a member of the First Chinese Senior Association of Vaughan, and participating in at least one activity at the Centre at the time of interview. Altogether, 13 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted over two weeks in July 2010. Five main essences were developed from the analysis of the interview data: changing leisure with changing culture; achieving and maintaining health; experiencing freedom and choice; cultural expression and cultural learning; and feeling a sense of community. Interestingly, there was also an overarching theme of leisure as an essential component to life. These findings exemplify the great value Chinese immigrants place upon leisure as they experienced it at the FCSAV as well as its connection to holistic health. Also, leisure at the club was described as a site for cultural expression and the development of community. Overall, implications of this study will be of most value to recreation practitioners and researchers by allowing for greater cultural sensitivity in developing and enhancing programs for this specific group.

An assignment of diploma thesis was to design a concert hall for Brno Philharmonic. Ten years ago, an architectural competition was held to design Janáček cultural centre on a plot between the streets Veselá and Besední. The winning project was simplified and divided into two parts (underground parking and concert hall). My proposal is based on the planned parking, which finally begins to build in 2015. Shape of the house respects the surrounding buildings. My aim was create the building, which would be functional, urban, beautiful and more economical than the winning project.

My diploma thesis deals with newly-built cultural and educational centre in the city of Velké Bílovice. The project is conducted at the level of documentation for construction. Building has the Z-shaped construction plan and contains a basement with two common floors. Cultural and educational centre is based on the basement walls of concrete formwork with concrete grout. The basement masonry is followed by concrete prefabricated skeleton with a lining of ceramic fittings of therm type. Horizontal structures are made of prestressed concrete panels Spiroll. The roof is flat with extensive greenery. The main entrance is oriented to the southwest side. Entryway to the lobby is through the hall where is access to all parts of the building. In the lobby there is a reception and main staircase with an elevator. Bar, library, reading room and an office adjoins the hall on the east side. On the west side there are sanitary facilities, dressing room and multipurpose hall. Technical facilities (including room of technology) are placed in the basement. Hall with gallery and sanitary facilities are situated in the central part of the second floor. House offices are functionally separated from the rest of the floor and located on the eastern side. There are also two lecture halls which can be combined into the one single hall on the west side of the building.

The main goal of the proposal was to solve the problem of combining socio-cultural centre with town hall. To use flexibility and mix-use and connect all functions so they work together. The main idea about function of the building was how the people feels when they go to such a building as town hall. The goal was to propose the space which is transparent and remove the barriers between bureaucrats and public, so you can already see from outside what is happening inside. The concept was to design long building with the foyer along the side oriented towards the square. All is based on transparency which supports democracy and trust, removes weird feelings about solid walls and closed doors. The fasade is made from long thin wooden pieces with glass between, the appearence of the building is jumped and sloped and pointed shape which relates with the functions and break the stereotype of the estate urban structure.

The Brno Philharmonic is renowned all over the world from London to Tokyo, but in its home town only has a small hall with poor acoustics not suitable for symphony concerts. The efforts to construct a worthy cultural venue to meet the needs of Brno go back to the interwar period and their implementation is still not in sight.The core of the project is a concert hall with capacity of 1,812. Its layout combines the advantages of standard shoebox-shaped halls and surround halls, because the best music experience gets the viewer who is quite close to the orchestra. The disadvantages of the former include poor contact with the orchestra in the rear seating, the latter sacrifice acoustical excellence mainly in the side and rear seating areas for audience proximity and visual stimulation. The building is composed of three functionally distinct parts: the audience’s part, musicians‘ background and technical equipment. The operation of each is placed in a horizontal part of a L-shaped solid. The vertical parts face each other creating a raised central cube containing the concert hall.

The project manage to transform = reconstruct the object of a cultural center and a museum in the center of Kopřivnice town. It analyses and widens the offerings of functions and increases aesthetic and cultural values of the building(s) and the surroundings. It also solves urban connections to the environment and wider relations in the town level.

in English This study of the Institut Français (IF) and the Russian centre of science and culture (RCSC) is significant because it reveals different models of functioning for a cultural centre in an international global context. The main purpose of the paper was to analyse the differences between the two cultural centres (IF and RCSC) and figure out in which way these differences influence the development of the cultural centres abroad. According to our main goal we operate within conceptual and theoretical framework: the national culture and soft power (as reasons of the development of national cultural centres), the globalization (as a condition of their development), the nation branding (as the result of their functioning). Moreover, this paper supports the hypotheses that national cultural centres abroad define their cultural strategies whilst facing the realities of other countries and that the roles of managers of cultural centres are fundamental. This work is divided into three main chapters. The first explains why the IF and RCSC centres were created by analysing the history of their transformations. We examine the reasons for the increasing amount of national cultural centres to provide the most efficient soft power. The second chapter addresses the question of where they are located. We...