Martin Rajniš

Martin Rajniš (born 16 May 1944) is a Czech architect, urbanist and professor. His architecture design career spans over fifty years and he taught at Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague from 1990 a 1997 and later at the Technical University of Liberec. He designed high-tech buildings in the 1980s and 1990s, and since 2000, he shifted the materiality and aesthetics of his designs from steel and concrete to "naturalistic" wood, stone and glass, resulting in a number of experimental and organically shaped structures. Rajniš is critical of engineered communist-era architecture, especially concrete tower blocks.

In 2014 he received the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture and has multiple nominations for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award.

Biography

Before 1989 Martin Rajniš was born in Prague on 16 May 1944, under the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1962–1969. In 2010, the Czech exhibition from 29 August to 21 November at the 12th International Venice Biennale of Architecture was designed by Rajniš.

In 2014, Rajniš was elected chairman of the Prague Institute of Planning and Development. In 2021, the authorities of Prague awarded Rajniš with the honorary medal of the capital city for significant lifetime achievements in the field of architecture.

Architectural style and theory Early works of Rajniš dated from the 1980s and 1990s have an international modernist or functionalist aesthetic of high-tech style Rajniš published a manifest of architecture where he explores topics such as diversity, symbiosis, adaptability, economy and ecology. Nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award in 2014 Nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award in 2018