The Family House of Miroslav Lorenc

Miroslav Lorenc founded his own design office immediately after his departure from the Baťa company in September 1931 in the family house where he lived with his wife Ludmila and two daughters Jiskra and Lea. The house and land belonged to his father-in-law Leopold Batík, a factory owner and politician who together with Vladimír Barbořík owned a shoe factory on Kvítková Street.

 

The house is located near Sokolovna and the playground, at the beginning of Sokolská street, in the extended centre of the city. It is a simple, one-storey house with a gable roof, which was built in 1907 by the Zlín builder Josef Winkler. It originally consisted of two rooms, a kitchen, a hall, a pantry, a veranda, a shed, and a laundry room; some rooms were gradually rebuilt and four living rooms were created. The architect's family also lived here in the second half of the 20th century. During this time, Ludmila Lorencová had to deal with a number of technical problems and period-imposed demands for housing single employees of national enterprises due to the so called "excessiveness" of accommodation spaces.

 

Since 1931, Miroslav Lorenc was one of the leading Zlín architects who designed in the "non-Baťa" parts of the city, but also in Napajedla and other nearby towns. Unlike František Lýdie Gahura, whose family home is located in Kudlov, or Vladimír Karfík, who lived with his family in the Nad Ovčírnou district, Miroslav Lorenc did not design his own house for his family. The family house thus testifies to the modest conditions in which Miroslav Lorenc designed and lived. The activity of his office was suddenly interrupted in 1940, when Lorenc was arrested. The architect's life and work in the resistance movement is still remembered today by a memorial plaque located on the façade of the house on Sokolská Street. The house is still inhabited, and not even the immediate surroundings, which relate to an older low-rise building near Sokolovna, have undergone major changes.

 

 

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