THE BUILDING

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries Brno began to change into a modern city. Extensive redevelopment to the historical core occurred and late Historicism and the Art Nouveau of the Austrian and German provenance became the architectural expression of the new structures.

Along with construction of the Brno ‘Ringstrasse’ the urban planning of Černá Pole (Black Field) began. The first villa colony in Brno was established here here on parcels of vineyard land above Lužánky Park in the year 1860. The area between the streets Drobného (originally Hutterova-Huttergasse later Sadová – Parkstrasse) and Černopolní (Schwarzfeldgasse) was part of Lužánky Park up to the second half of the 19^th century with the public greenery here freely overlapping the private gardens. The first villa in this locality was designed by the Brno builder Josef Arnold, in all probability according to urban planning by Heinrich Ferstel, one of the main architects of the Vienna Ringstrasse. At the beginning of the 20^th century the construction development of this land was supplemented by tenement buildings on Antonína Slavíka and Helfertova streets and the monumental composition of Schodová street. Černá Pole became one of the most sought out Brno residential neighbourhoods during the period prior to World War I and consequently up to the end of the 1930s thanks to the supply of both individual and cooperative family housing.

The oldest, the Kaiser Villa, was built in the year 1860 at Černopolní street while the second came about, the builder Josef Arnold’s own villa, in the year 1862 along with at practically the same time, the neighbouring villa for the Brno lawyer Karel Giskra. The final of the three homes ‘hidden’ in the depths of the gardens was, the now demolished, Adamčik Villa. The placement of these structures is clearly apparent on old maps of Brno. Cecílie Hože, the sister of Grete’s father Alfred Löw-Beer became the owner of the Arnold Villa in the year 1909. She was married to Kornelia Hože, a well-known Brno lawyer and co-owner of the cement works in nearby Maloměřice. The house with its extensive land which can be seen from the living space of Villa Tugendhat, was renovated in the Art Deco style with elements of the Art Nouveau by Grete’s aunt over the years 1909–1915. In October 1939 the property was confiscated by the Gestapo, only to be nationalized by the state and served as a kindergarten from the year 1952 until 2012 (at present the land is the property of the city of Brno). Members of both the Löw-Beer and Tugendhat families began to settle on more property in the immediate surroundings starting from the beginning of the 1920s and contributed to a significant extent to the ‘cultivation’ of this part of the city.

Grete’s father, Alfred Löw-Beer, purchased an Art Nouveau villa on a practically neighbouring plot of land on Drobného street 22 in the year 1913 built over the years 1903–1904 by the Brno textile industrialist Moritz Fuhrmann. The author of the building was in all probability the Viennese architect Alexandr von Neumann. The house included extensive land with a vineyard and garden which expanded and led all the way up to Černopolní street. After Grete’s marriage to Fritz Tugendhat, she received the upper part of the plot of land from her father as a gift for the construction of a house for her family. The Löw-Beer Villa, which Grete grew up in, was also confiscated by the Gestapo in October 1939 and later transferred to the property of the state. It served as a boarding facility starting in the 1960s (at present the property belongs to the South Moravian Region). There are plans to once again unite both houses along with the land into one whole with Villa Tugendhat as an installed monument to Modern architecture and the Löw-Beer Villa as a living centre for Modern architecture.

The house is supported by a huge supporting concrete wall at the site of the street  level, thereby creating an expansion between the high edge of the terrain at Černopolní street and the actual structure. The construction of the plastered structure consists of a steel skeleton, reinforced concrete ceilings and brick masonry. The subtle supporting columns of a cross-shaped profile are anchored in concrete bases and partially lead through the masonry and partially through the spaces of all the floors. Shiny chrome cladding is employed in the living area. The individual functional zones within the area are divided up by the wall from honey and yellow coloured onyx with white veins from the foothills of the Atlas in Morocco and the half-circular wall originally from Macassar ebony wood mined on the island of Celebes in south-east Asia. An additional separate room could be entered through drawing back curtains made from shantung silk and velvet. “We initially saw the floor plan for one huge room with one circular and one free standing wall. We consequently noticed small crosses at approximately five metres distance from one another. We asked, ‘What are these?’  Mies answered calmly, ‘Those are iron supports which hold up the entire structure.’ At that there had never been a private house built with an iron construction so you can imagine our initial surprise. Despite this fact, we deeply liked the plan.”

The most prominent feature of the ‘flowing’ living area was the grand seating arrangement in front of the onyx wall and the dining room demarcated by the half-cylinder from Makassar ebony. The interior could be connected up with the garden through suspension of the two large window panes. The office with the library and the adjoining winter garden was behind the onyx wall. Behind the ebony curved wall was a seating area next to a wall from milk glass which could be lit up.

The structure was realized, under the supervision of the author and with the participation of a number of domestic and foreign companies, by the Brno construction company of Artur and Mořic Eisler. It was completed in December 1930 when the Tugendhats finally moved into the house. “From the first moment we truly loved the house. (…) When we were on our own, we would sit in the library while with friends we would prefer to spend evenings in front of the glass wall lit up from the rear with its subtle and gentle light. We enjoyed the house even more during the spring and summer. When the children were small, we were constantly with them on the terrace. They had a tub there for splashing as well as a polygon crate with sand in the shade. They would ride along the entire terrace in their skates and children’s cars.”

The utility and technical equipment of the house were completely innovative for the time. The two large windows opposite the onyx wall and the dining area could be retracted via electric motors all the way to the floor. The boiler room and storage areas for coke, the cellar, spaces for garden furniture and tools, rooms for fruit and vegetables, wash room, drying room, ironing room as well as the “moth room” for storage of fur coats were in the basement. There was also the dark room for Fritz Tugendhat who was a passionate photographer and amateur film maker. There was a distribution system for drinking and utility water as well as an air system, involving a combination of heating, cooling and humidification. “In order not to deform the large space with heating structures, an air system was created which could be used as air conditioning in the summer months. Despite the fact there was still very little experience with this kind of equipment in private homes at the time, this air system worked perfectly. The entire space would be warm only half an hour after opening it.” The safety and signalling equipment were also technically brilliant. “The access from the street to the terrace was closed by an electric eye at night allowing us to keep open the doors to the bedroom onto the terrace.”

The Tugendhats rejected the view that the monumental, impassioned living space would only allow for a kind of ceremonial or showpiece housing, and in contrast expressed their complete satisfaction with its variable character. The unforced domestic calm also radiates from the family photographs by Fritz Tugendhat who was a photo enthusiast and amateur filmmaker.

From the philosophical perspective the Tugendhat Villa particularly reflects the influence of the German Catholic Modern movement. The American art historian Barry Bergdoll as well as the Czech art historian Rostislav Švácha have pointed out in this connection the ideas of the philosopher Romano Guardini, one of the most significant figures of German Christian Personalism. Mies had met with Guardini and his ideas had additionally influenced Grete Tugendhat. “Large spaces provide freedom. Space has a completely special calm in its rhythm which cannot be provided by a closed room.” The snaps by Fritz Tugendhat are genuine personal interpretation of space in contrast with the ‘official’ photographs of the architecture. “When I allow these spaces and everything which is inside them to influence me as whole, I clearly feel: what beauty is, what is truth.” The Tugendhats apparently knew Guardini’s views or at least discussed them with Mies. Guardini’s works, which came about at the same time as the design of the Villa, state that a well-built internal space has levels which lead into depths. This is precisely the manner in which one enters downward into the space of Tugendhat Villa the intimate character of which is protected by the stern street section of the house.

Art historical theories and interpretations of not only Tugendhat Villa but Mies’ work in general will continue to stimulate generations of art historians and architecture theoreticians. Up until now almost all of them have agreed that the essence of the Brno realization was the arrangement of the main living space and its connection up with the external outdoors. One of the starting points was undoubtedly the ideas of F. L. Wright and his  “open plan” which at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries removed the four walls demarcating the rooms allowing for the emergence of a continual space with a connection to the exterior of the structure. Mies van der Rohe himself did not write anything about the Brno Villa, but he did discuss the conception in detail with his educated clients.

This country’s leading, and by coincidence also from Brno, art historians view “the loose” and “the open” space of the house as analogical to the architecture of the Middle Ages and the Baroque. Václav Richter compared Mies’ space conception with Santini’s radical Baroque space in the pilgrimage church on Zelená hora near Žďár nad Sázavou. Richter’s student Zdeněk Kudělka has made reference to the Neo-Gothic aspects of this space which is enhanced by a cross-like connected profile of steel supporting columns and the mirror-like gloss of its chrome cladding. These interpretations coincide with Richter’s remarkable periodization of the history of “the open” architectural space which was in his view only fulfilled in the Gothic, in the radical Baroque and in the skeleton architecture of the 20^th century.

Mies’ student Philip Johnson and after him the Swiss architecture historian Sigfried Giedion have interpreted the interior of the Brno Villa as “a flowing” space whose “flow” is only gently channelled by the lines of the onyx and the Macassar inner wall in harmony with the regular rhythm of the supporting columns and the carefully placed furniture.

The period Czechoslovak specialised journals ostentatiously ignored Mies’ realization in Brno. The only positive evaluation of the building in the domestic press came from the exclusive society magazine Měsíc (Month) which presented the Villa as one of the crowning expressions of contemporary aesthetic and technical maturity. The negative attitude by Czech specialised circles would thus seem to foreshadow the painful future of both the Villa and its inhabitants.

‘Brno’ chairs made from tubular steel and upholstered in white sheepskin were situated around the round dining table from black polished pear wood. Chairs were placed next to the glazed milk wall and in the library. Two ‘MR 20’ wicker armchairs faced one another next to the writing desk behind the onyx wall. The majority of the metal furniture was produced in Germany (Berliner Metallwerke Josef Müller and Bamberg Metallwerkstätten). The built-in furniture and part of the free-standing items were produced in the Brno firm Standard Flat Company of the architect Jan Vaňek which at the same time realized part of the interiors of the Müller Villa in Prague by Adolf Loos. Vaňek’s firm apparently also installed the curved inner wall from Makassar ebony. “Mies had a round table designed for the circular dining room with one metal leg, in the exact form of the iron columns, which could also be retracted into the floor. The table top was from black pear tree wood. The reverse side had metal rails in order to enlarge the table to twice the size.”

The architect and designer Lilly Reich contributed significantly to the conception and design of the interiors. She cooperated with Mies on the exhibition for the German Werkbund ‘Housing’ at the Weissenhof housing estate in Stuttgart as well as on the exhibition of fashion and silk in Berlin in the year 1927. A turning point in their cooperation became the design for the World Exhibition in Barcelona in the year 1929. Reich created the furnishings of the flat for Mies’ house in Weissenhof where the floor surfaces were covered in linoleum in red, blue and white colours while the particular spaces were separated by light curtains which served to regulate the lighting of the interior. The principle of ‘flowing’ space from the exhibitions in Berlin and Barcelona was consequently applied in the Brno Villa. The selection of materials and the colour scheme of the textiles were fully supervised by Lilly Reich. “All of these combinations of colour were tried out a number of times by Mies on site along with Lilly Reich. There were also of course the curtains and carpets: in front of the onyx wall was a handwoven rug from light natural wool while behind the onyx wall was also a hand woven rug from brown natural wool. There were Persian rugs in the library and under the wing which we chose ourselves. The peculiar black colour of the shantung curtain in front of the conservatory was similarly carefully chosen to fit with the black velvet curtain hanging nearby and with the silver-grey shantung silk at the rear wall. A white velvet curtain hung between the entrance and the library, allowing this part of the living area to be completely closed off, thereby creating an intimate seating space. The furniture in the upper rooms was also designed with the same care.” The authorship of the book shelf behind the writing desk in Fritz Tugendhat’s room has also been attributed to Lilly Reich, as a writing desk next to a window with a low bookshelf behind it was a typical interior composition a la Lilly. She was also apparently the author of the white cabinet with dark glazing in the main living area the construction of which reflects the principle of the steel structural system of the house.

The creative contribution of Sergius Ruegenberg is less apparent. He produced a number of drawing designs for the house including for the interiors. Mies entrusted him, for example, with developing a suitable armchair for the Barcelona pavilion, the model for which was Mies’ earlier designed stool. A range of Ruegenberg’s sketches have survived, in which one can observe, amongst other things, the shape of the ‘Tugendhat’ armchair.

The only art work in the interior was the statue of a female torso by Wilhelm Lehmbruck from the year 1913. After consultation with Mies it was chosen instead of the originally planned statue by Aristid Maillol and soon became very popular with the Tugendhats.

They consequently visited three of his realizations from recent years along with Mies. “We especially liked the house for Mr. Wolf in Guben which he had just completed. This was a large-scale house built from hard-burnt brick. Our house was originally supposed to have been built from the same material, but we discovered that there were not attractive hard-burnt bricks in Brno nor bricklayers who would know how to apply it properly.” Not only due to his architectural vision, but also in light of the placement of the building on a slope, Mies finally elected the supporting structure of a steel skeleton with backing masonry. The delicate supporting columns of a cross-section with riveted angles are from German steel. The columns on the terraces have brass cladding with patina coating to a bronze in copper colour, the columns in the main living area have brass chromium plating  with a bright lustre. All of the window frames and a number of the doors are made from steel. All of the plastering was carried out in the natural colour tone of sand (they did not have a white coating). The internal plaster had a velvet lustre thanks to the final layer (stucco lustro).

The Italian almost white travertine (Tivoli locality) ranks among the original stone elements. This was employed in the interiors on, for example, the floors of the entrance hall and the staircases, and in the exteriors on the parapet and the bases of the upper terrace and the garden terrace with the stairs (this was replaced during the restoration of the Villa over the years 1981–85 with Spiš travertine from Slovakia). The so-called onyx wall is a truly remarkable decorative and at the same time functional stone element in the interior of the Villa. The honey-coloured, yellow rock with white veins was mined from the Atlas Mountains in former French Morocco in North Africa and is actually aragonite sediment (calcium carbonate). “I do not know which stonemason company Mies obtained the stone from. Mr. Lohan told me he found it in Hamburg where it was supposed to be used for the production of two large vases for a luxury steamer. It had been committed to be sold, consequently they did not want to oblige Mies. He was so impressed by it, however, that he refused to give in and finally obtained it in the end (…) Mies personally supervised the exact cutting and placing of the slab so as to allow the lines of the stone to stand out properly.” The special characteristics of the onyx are intensified during the winter sunny days. “When it was sufficiently demonstrated that the stone was transparent and that certain veins on the back side shone red when lit up from the front by the sunset, it was a joyous surprise for even him (Mies).”

The exclusive exotic woods came from south-east Asia. The wall cladding in the entrance hall, doors and built-in closets in the parent’s rooms were from veneered palisander. The children’s rooms made use of zebra veneer. The main living area contained the impressive ebony veneer from the region of Makassar on the island of Celebes. The dark brown and yellow veined ebony wood for the half-cylinder  in the dining room and for the built-in library (preserved up until the present in its original state) was apparently chosen by Mies in Paris where he found sufficiently long veneer which would reach from the floor all the way to the ceiling. The architect Viktor Průša from the Brno company of the architect Jan Vaňek which installed the majority of the built-in furniture in the Villa, recalls the circumstances as follows, “the adventurous search for ebony logs with uniform veneer in the import warehouses throughout Europe, in particular when cutting in the veneer factory in southern Moravia for the demanding architect of the Brno Villa.” The half-cylinder wall divided the space of the dining room and was destroyed in the year 1940 and over the years 1981–85 and replaced by a new construction of zebra veneer. The working desk and the table in the main living area as well as additional pieces of furniture were also made of Makassar ebony.

White DLW linoleum (Deutsche Linoleum-Werke) was laid on the floors in the main living area and in the bedrooms. “Mies van der Rohe wanted the floor to function as a solid surface which is not the case with parquet floors. The white colour was additionally neutral (…). I must admit that it was extremely sensitive to dirt and required a great deal of care.”

The façade of the house contained climbing greenery evoking “the optical disappearance” of the mass of the building in plant life, this being further enhanced by the ideal linking of the interior and the exterior. The actual arrangement of the garden with compositional connections with the main living area was most obviously apparent in the continuity of space of the dining area with the elongated half-circular terrace under the weeping window. The dry dwarf wall from variously placed stones planted with perennials created the optical base for the house having been designated for the view of the house from the lower part of the garden. The roses planted in front of the garden façades, evident in family photographs, were not part of the architectural conception. Grete loved them, however, despite the fact that they suffered from excessive sunlight and quickly faded. She wouldoften make mention of the beauty of the blooming roses in the large spaces or strips around the home in later interviews. Plants were placed in pots at the entrance parts from Černopolní street as well as from the garden terrace. The close connection between the house and the vegetation culminated in the interior of the winter garden adjoining the main living area. The winter garden contained a rectangular pond with water plants and greenery in pots. “My husband established a genuine greenhouse in the winter garden with blooming plants. The view through the greenery from the greenhouse of the snow outside was lovely.”

The Brno garden architect Markéta Roderová-Müllerová (1898–1981) contributed significantly to the garden concept, having made Mies’ acquaintance apparently as a result of the realization work by the construction company of the Eisler brothers. Mies was undoubtedly impressed by her having graduated from the gardening school in Lednice na Moravě, her distance studies at the prestigious gardening college in Berlin-Dahlem and finally her German heritage. The layout of the garden was designed under his supervision in the spirit of the so-called “emphasised emptiness” where the main motif consisted of the large grassed spaces with isolated vegetation. Perspective sketches of the garden and the upper terrace were carried out by Sergio Ruegenberg (1903–1996) who also related that the hemicycle bench on the upper terrace came about after a visit to Charlottenhof Palace by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich.

Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat has related the following based upon recollections from her mother: “The connection between the interior and the exterior, the dialogue between architecture and nature served to define the essential structure of the house […] The garden was left as a meadow to a significant extent providing a small paradise for play for children […] The children could sled and ski in the winter all the way to the home of their grandparents. It could have been the realised vision of freedom for this small wealthy family which was so important for Mies.”

Although the Tugendhats did not have all that rich social life, despite their home being an ideal setting, they did organise an annual bridge tournament in the Villa for up to one hundred invited guests. The proceeds from this event were consequently donated to the League for Human Rights. In May 1938, Grete and the children left for Sankt Gallen in Switzerland. Fritz remained in Brno with the governess Irene Kalkofen who helped him in preparing their personal things for transport along with certain pieces of furniture. Irene Kalkofen (1909–2004) came from Berlin and had both German nationality as well as citizenship. She had it seemed worked for the Tugendhats earlier in Germany and  had consequently come to Brno  from September 1928 up until 1929 and later from February 1931 practically from their moving into the Villa. She left Brno for England at the beginning of July 1938. In the year 1995 Mrs. Irene Kalkofen actually visited the Villa personally.

At the beginning of October 1939  the Villa was taken over by the Gestapo and from January 1942 became the property of Nazi Germany. In the autumn of the year 1940 the  German soldier and architecture student, Louis Schoberth, stayed in the Villa. He became friends with Gustav Lössl, the Tugendhat’s chauffeur who had remained in the house up until the beginning of September 1941. According to Schoberth’s account, the half cylinder from Makassar ebony was no longer in the Villa nor the majority of the furnishings as of the autumn of the year 1940. Radical construction changes came about in the 1940s when Walter Messerschmidt, director of Klöcknerwerke in Brno, had his flat and office here. He had amongst other things the glazed milk glass wall bricked up at the street façade and the entrance way from the upper terrace. He also increased the height of the chimney and had additional inner walls inserted into the interiors.

The cavalry regiment of Marshal Malinovský contributed to the devastation of the house upon the occasion of the liberation by the Soviet Army in April 1945. Vlasta Hvozdecká recalls it as follows, “They tore down the garden fence of a length of approximately 6 metres and rode from here around Černá Pole where they plundered flats. Since we lived directly across from the destroyed fence of the Tugendhat garden, we were horrified by their behaviour. We could only see the former conservatory in the Villa from the window of our living room. They created a stable for their horses from the magnificent social rooms!” The remains of the furniture served as wood fuel while the linoleum on the floors was destroyed by the hoofs of the horses. The glazed walls were broken as a consequence of the pressure waves during the bombardment. The state of the Villa at the end of the war was described succinctly in a written protocol.  For example on the terrace were “the damaged bench and (…) scattered pieces of furniture (…)”, the flat of the caretaker “had everything in a desolate state, devastated, broken, fragments, rubbish, dirt, rags, various garbage, glass, etc. all over the floor.” The main living area had “the large window panes smashed with glass everywhere along with horse manure as the entire Villa had been used for housing horses. Only the onyx wall remained along with the built-in bookshelf (…).” The utility floor “was missing the motors for the machines for air movement and for letting down the windows, the boiler had been damaged (…).” The removal of the damage was entrusted to the Brno architect Albín Hofírek. The broken window panes were temporarily glazed while the linoleum in the main living area was replaced with red wood wool cement board.

The private dancing school of an instructor at the Brno conservatory Karla Hladká consequently sat in the Villa from August 1945 up to June 1950. The structure was placed under the ownership of the Czechoslovak state in October 1950 and a rehabilitation centre for children with spine defects was established here as part of the nearby children’s hospital up to the end of the 1960s.

Thanks to his specialised training in the area of architecture along with his remarkable personal contacts with world respected figures in the branch, he succeeded in intense work on the rehabilitation of the Villa. He established a personal correspondence with Grete Tugendhat who lived in Sankt Gallen in Switzerland at the time. She consequently visited Brno at his personal invitation in November 1967. Upon returning to Switzerland she wrote to Kalivoda: “I was in Brno last week for the first time in 29 years and horrified by the state of the house. By this I do not think that the children’s hospital is neglected, on the contrary it is kept very clean and is in fine condition. The construction changes which have been carried out, however, are so awful that one cannot even obtain a picture as to what the house originally looked like, with it no longer looking by any means attractive at present. Nobody would be able to imagine that this consisted of any particularly special work of construction.”

An exhibition on the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe took place in the Brno House of Arts from the 20^th of December 1968 up until the 26^th of January 1969 which had been prepared in two identical collections in Chicago and West Berlin. It came to Brno thanks to the initiative of the monument institute as well as the personal involvement of František Kalivoda. A one-day international working conference along with a lecture evening in the House of Arts that same day took place as part of the exhibition on the 17^th of January 1969. Grete Tugendhat spoke at the event with a speech rendered in Czech on the circumstances and course of the construction of the Villa, concerning the interiors, the materials and the technical furnishings along with the communication between the commissioners and the architect. Here mention was made once again of Mies’ ‘I will not build’. “When my husband objected to the idea of having all of the doors reach from the floor all the way to the ceiling, because all the so-called specialists had told him that these kinds of doors would warp, Mies answered, then I will not build. This would have affected the main principle of the structure and he would not allow this to be a matter of discussion.” The exhibition was greatly successful. The personal participation on the part of Grete Tugendhat along with the architect Dirk Lohan, the grandson of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who could not come to Brno at the time, created high hopes for the renewal of the Villa. Mies’ Chicago office was prepared to cooperate on restoration of the Villa.

František Kalivoda discussed the renewal of the garden with the co-author of the project Markéta Roderová-Müllerová in April 1969 who was ready to prepare a plan for planting the garden in accordance with Mies’ concept. There were also considerations regarding a plan for connecting the Tugendhat Villa garden with the garden of the Löw-Beer villa, this having originally made up a territorial whole, although not an architectural one.

After the occupation of Czechoslovakia in the year 1968 and in particular after the emergence of the political lines in the year 1969 the situation changed dramatically with the liberalized conditions brought to a halt. Despite the fact that Grete Tugendhat was able to visit Brno several more times up until April 1970, attempts at renovation of the Villa were discouraged. A definitive full stop to this stage came about with the deaths of the main protagonists of all the activity (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe passed away in August 1969, Grete Tugendht in December 1970 and František Kalivoda in May 1971).  The architect’s daughter Georgia van der Rohe was even forbidden to carry out shooting in the Villa for a film about the life and work of her father in the year 1979.

Villa Tugendhat moved from the property of the state to the property of the City of Brno in the year 1980 with a new stage in its history consequently beginning. This consisted of a compromise, but a necessary and beneficial step in the end.

The investor, the department of internal affairs of the National Committee of the City of Brno, established clear guidelines: the house should serve for advertising the city and occasional accommodation of guests. The public was clearly not taken into account. There was no construction-historical, restoration or other research carried out. The only sources of information made use of by the architects were the archive plans and photography from the collections of the Brno City Museum. The main ambition of the project was to restore the Villa to a solid construction-technical state and preserve it for future years. The work of the design team and the actual realization need to be clearly differentiated. The investor carried out minor construction work on the Villa, even prior to receiving the design preparation, wherein certain original elements were destroyed. The project was literally strictly vetoed quite often during the actual construction work with demands for alternative designs. The main supplier of the construction project, the Construction Company of the City of Brno, was also problematic in terms of their participation.

There were no actual statics defects to the house apart from the terrace with the stairway down to the garden which had not been sufficiently supported during the initial construction of the Villa. The subtle steel construction of the glazed panels in the main living area, as well as the steel frames of windows and doors on the bedroom floor, showed evidence of considerable levels of corrosion caused by large thermal bridges and condensation. They were only thoroughly cleaned, however, repaired and coated with a readily available paint.  Supplies of large-surface glass from a foreign investor were rejected and the glazing was consequently carried out with two pieces with a central dividing joint sealed with transparent silicon putty. The only preserved window opposite the onyx inner wall had to be destroyed at the order of the investor in the final phase of the construction work as its colour and absence of a dividing joint was not “in line” with the new glazing. The original linoleum mark DLW was replaced by the domestic PVC. The curved inner wall from Macassar ebony near the dining room was secured with a shorter height dimension with this difference, against the will of the designers, dealt with by an adaptation with a high socle with inappropriate longitudinal veneer work. The preserved sanitary objects in the bathrooms and WC as well as the radiators had been to a great extent disassembled prior to the beginning of the design work by the construction crew of the investor who was unwilling to even discuss leaving them in situ or storing them. The original supporting construction for the retractable windows was preserved in both engine rooms while the disassembled drive units were newly supplemented. The engine room for the air technology  was practically in its original state with only elements added which were needed for the functioning of the system. The original boiler room for coke was transformed into a calorifier room connected up to the outdoor caliduct. The upper dwelling terrace was newly paved with replicas of the paving stones created from the same sizes of stone, placed into exact forms and laid in accordance with the original installation drawing. The travertine socles and capitals of the railings of the upper terrace were original as were the constructions of the benches. The partially authentic fencing was supplemented to while the newly introduced roof had bitumen roofing. The damaged sections of outdoor plastering were replaced in the original structure with a white façade coat of a silicate base, while the internal plaster was sensitively repaired and treated with a layer of white paint.

A team of specialists under the supervision of Karel Ksander carried out construction historical research on the structure in the year 2001. Professor Ivo Hammer, the husband of the youngest daughter of the commissioners of the Villa, Professor Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat, supervised restoration research here over the years 2003–2005. This research along with careful studying of the documentation from the years 1981-1982 has indicated that the project was on a particularly high professional level for its day. The actual realization consequently occurred in line with the financial, technical, material and technological possibilities of the time period.