Fuchs's architectural work was naturally followed by his designs for applied art. On his initiative, the Brno company Magazín Aka was founded on December 1, 1932, a family business that aimed to produce a comprehensive range of home accessories of various types and materials, meeting the needs of contemporary modern interiors. Many buildings built according to Fuchs' designs were equipped with the Aka company's range. Fuchs himself designed several ceramic vases, tea and coffee sets, dessert services and jars for the Aka company in 1933–1935, which were produced in workshops in Kunštát or Letovice. He was the author of trays, dessert bowls and table lamps made of chrome-plated metal, produced by Tomáš Třasák's Brno company. In cooperation with the Slovak company Sandrik, small items were created from alpaca – writing sets, egg holders, cups, etc. According to the architect’s designs, the glassworks in Květná produced drink and liqueur sets, vases and bowls made of clear, turquoise and smoked glass. Fuchs’s artistic designs for applied art demonstrate his sense as an architect, they are carriers of pure geometric shapes and their aesthetic effect lies in simplicity and perfect interplay of proportions. In the area of Aka’s corporate textile production, the architect’s wife Drahomíra Fuchsová, née Střelcová, played a decisive role. She reflected her cultivated artistic perception in a number of decorative designs for curtains, tablecloths, place settings, upholstery fabrics and carpets. From the mid-1930s, the Brno painter František Kaláb began to make an intensive impact in the company, enriching the Aka company's offer in the area of home textiles with a new artistic concept in the spirit of abstract compositions. Aka's intention at that time was to provide customers with a complete service in furnishing their homes, from curtains, draperies, upholstery fabrics to carpets in the desired color and pattern. Aka also established its own sales network in Brno, Olomouc, Ostrava and Prague and regularly presented its work at exhibitions in the Aleš pavilion in Brno, in Zlín, in Moravská Ostrava, in Prague, but also abroad (the Netherlands, the USA). An extraordinary exhibition event took place in 1938 in Brno, where the architect František Kalivoda added an exhibition of Finnish seating furniture by Alvar Aalto to the company presentation of Aka's production (artistic design by Fuchs). It was Kalivoda who created the graphic visuals of the company's eye-catching printed materials in 1937–1940, and especially the typographical design of the magazine Magazín Aka with the subtitle "magazine for industrial art and residential architecture".
In the mid-1930s, the thriving textile workshops of the magazine AKA, which had been based in Brno on Hybešova Street until then, needed to expand their production facilities. The new workshop complex was to be built in the Tišnov region, where Fuchs had designed a number of buildings in the 1930s, including his own cottage. It was his stay in the Bobrůvka countryside that led him to the idea of moving the AKA company's production to the valley below the village of Skryje. Fuchs conceived the project for the Skryjé complex as a complex urban structure with clear zoning: a factory and a colony of family houses were located on the right bank of the river, and dormitories, a community center (used as a cinema) and technical infrastructure including a waterworks, bridges and a hydroelectric power plant (completed in 1942) were located on the left bank. The complex began to be implemented in 1937–1939, but was only partially completed. A limited set of buildings has survived to this day, mainly residential houses, a bridge and a waterworks.
The architecture here deviates from strict functionalism towards an organic expression, using natural materials and traditional constructions. The Skryjé complex thus represents an exceptional example of the synthesis of architecture, landscape and social ideal.
In 1948, the functioning workshops with more than 160 employees were nationalized. The area has been partially preserved in its original form, the nearby hydroelectric power plant is no longer functional, but the family houses for employees on the slope above the workshop complex, which is privately owned and almost inaccessible, have been significantly modernized.
Literature
Iloš Crhonek. Architekt Bohuslav Fuchs. Celoživotní dílo. Brno, Petrov, 1995, p. 135, 147.
Zdeněk Kudělka. Bohuslav Fuchs. Praha, NČSVU, 1966, p. 47, 102–103, 130.
BRDÍČKOVÁ, Kateřina a RYBNÍČEK, Tomáš (eds.). Nový svět Bohuslava Fuchse na Tišnovsku. Tišnov, Muzeum města Tišnova, 2013.
Marcela Macharáčková. AKA. Užité umění 30. a 40. let v Brně. Brno, 1990.













