Mgr. Vendula Hnídková, Ph.D.

Researcher at the Department of Art of the 19th-21st Centuries.

Vendula Hnídková studied art history at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno (MA 2004) and theory and history of design and intermedia at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague (Ph.D. 2011). Since 2004, she has been employed at the IAH CAS. Here, she co-authored two volumes of the publication Umělecké památky Prahy. Velká Praha (2017) and prepared the exhibition and accompanying publication entitled Národní styl. Kultura a politika [National Style: Culture and Politics] at the National Gallery Prague (2013). In 2022, she curated the exhibition The Zenger Transformer Station. Electricity in the City, Electricity in Architecture at the Kunsthalle Praha, and both exhibitions were accompanied by books with the same titles. Between 2017 and 2018, she was Assistant Professor at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague. Between 2018 and 2020, she was a research fellow at the University of Birmingham (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship), conducting research into garden cities as part of the project Idea, Ideal, Idyll: Garden Cities in Central Europe 1890s–1930s. . In 2023–2026, she is the Czech principal investigator of the bilater project “Invisible Agents” in Architecture (1908-38). Policies, Principles, and Projects in Central European Ministries of Public Works (FWF – Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung; Austrian principal investigator is Richard Kurdiovsky)

Research outputs (selection):

Vendula Hnídková, Richard Kurdiovsky, Anna Stuhlpfarrer, When the State Builds. The Architectural Agenda of the k. k. Ministerium für öffentliche Arbeiten (1908-1918), the Bundesministerium für Handel und Verkehr and the Ministerstvo veřejných prací (1918–1938), in: Josipa Alviž, Dragan Damjanović, Jasmina Nestić, Jeremy F. Walton (eds.), Art and the State in Modern Central Europe (18th – 21st Century), Zagreb 2024, 481-496.

Vendula Hnídková, The Zenger Transformer Station. Electricity in the City, Electricity in Architecture, Prague 2022.

Vendula Hnídková, Lost in Translation? The Idea of the Garden City and its Migration to the Czech Lands, 1900–1938, Art East Central 1, 2021, č. 1, s. 77–104.

Vendula Hnídková, The Obecní dům (Municipal Building), Prague, in: Richard Kurdiovsky, Stefan Schmidl (Hg.), Das Wiener Konzerthaus 1913–2013 im typologischen, stilistischen, ikonographischen und performativen Kontext Mitteleuropas, Wien 2020, s. 125–140.

Vendula Hnídková, The Clementinum. A Baroque Monument in the Capital of Socialist Czechoslovakia, in: Michaela Marek (†) and Eva Pluhařová-Grigienė (eds.), „Prekäre Vergangenheit? Barockforschung im östlichen Mitteleuropa unter den Bedingungen des Sozialismus“, RIHA Journal Special Issue, 0214 (June 5 2019).

Vendula Hnídková, Jan Šépka. Inspirace, Praha 2019.

Vendula Hnídková, Temple of Croatian Artists in the Context of Hard Times, in: Barbara Vujanović (ed.), The Sign of Meštrović in Zagreb. The 80 Years of Meštrović Pavilion, Zagreb 2019, pp. 6–45.

Vendula Hnídková, Moskva 1937 — architektura a propaganda v západní perspektivě, Praha 2018.

Vendula Hnídková – Jindřich Vybíral, Architektura a politická moc, in: Milena Bartlová, Jindřich Vybíral a kol., Budování státu. Reprezentace Československa v umění, architektuře a designu, Praha 2015, pp. 106–114.

Vendula Hnídková, Národní styl. Kultura a politika, Praha 2013.

Vendula Hnídková, Rondocubism versus National Style, RIHA Journal 0011 (08 November 2010).

Vendula Hnídková, Pavel Janák. Obrys doby, Praha 2009.

Current projects:

2023 – 2026 Czech principal investigator of the bilateral project “Invisible Agents” in Architecture (1908-38). Policies, Principles, and Projects in Central European Ministries of Public Works (FWF – Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Austrian principal investigator Richard Kurdiovsky)

Co-convenor of an international conference Architecture and the Power of Bureaucracy (13 – 15 November 2025, Vienna, with Richard Kurdiovsky)

Special Issue RIHA Journal entitled Acting Institutions. Agents, Actors, and Authorities in Modern Architecture