Before architecture, before engineering, I drew. Nine years at the Jan Falta Basic Art School in Náchod, between the ages of six and fifteen — the first place where I learned that a line can carry weight.
The second was the Architect Jan Letzel Secondary Technical School of Civil Engineering in my hometown, which quickly pushed me out of the classroom and onto the construction site. After my first year, from the age of sixteen onward, I spent my summers as a labourer's assistant, mixing concrete between school years. It taught me the first thing about a building: that it is, before anything else, a physical fact. It has weight. It pushes back.
I had wanted to study architecture from my secondary-school years onward, but my path was not direct. A failed English school-leaving exam closed my first university choice; my architecture entrance test at CTU Prague was lost when the committee could not open the USB drive carrying my portfolio. Civil engineering was the alternative I could enter, and I took it.
Two years in, walking across the CTU campus, I remembered that I had originally come to become an architect. I spent the summer relearning secondary-school mathematics, passed the entrance examination, and from then on studied architecture and structural engineering in parallel. Two Bachelor's degrees, then a Master of structural engineering — all at the Czech Technical University in Prague.
I did not confine my learning to the university campus. Throughout my demanding dual studies, I consistently tested my academic knowledge against professional reality. I started by drafting residential projects at Atelier Dedek, and later moved to HRA Studio as an architectural assistant, translating complex conceptual visions—such as a major hospital extension—into precise drawings. As my engineering expertise grew, so did the technical weight of my work. Taking on a part-time role as a junior structural engineer at RECOC, I detailed concrete reinforcement for international markets. I then broadened my scope at CASUA as a junior building engineer, producing construction details for Waltrovka, one of Prague's largest contemporary residential developments. Shifting daily between the fluid world of architectural design and the rigorous demands of structural and construction detailing, my hybrid approach began to solidify.
In 2018, I was awarded a CSC Scholarship for a 2.5-year Master of Architecture programme at Tianjin University in China. During my first months on campus, an incidental conversation led me to apply for a demanding three-year double-degree programme: a first year in Tianjin, a second at the University of Sassari in Italy, and a final year back in China. The first year and a half proceeded smoothly. Then, during the break just after the first week of my second Italian semester, the COVID-19 pandemic escalated. Teaching moved online, and though I successfully completed my Italian year remotely, my scheduled return to China became impossible as the country completely closed its borders.
What followed was one of the most difficult and complex periods of my professional life. My scholarship and studies were suspended indefinitely. Caught in administrative limbo, facing a lack of funding, and navigating endless, uncertain digital communication with the university, I found myself just one step away from my coveted international degree but entirely paralysed by external forces. It was a time of deep frustration, dashed momentum, and feelings of failure. Most students in my cohort eventually gave up and dropped out. I did not. Through sheer endurance and patience, I kept the dialogue alive, finally completing my defence in Tianjin in 2025. Following this, I resolved the remaining formalities with the University of Sassari and am set to collect my Italian diploma in the autumn of 2026.
While my studies were suspended, I remained in Náchod, working as an independent consultant on industrial reconstructions — including a structural assessment that averted an unnecessary million-euro rebuild. Between 2023 and 2025, I also taught structural mechanics, design studio, technical drawing, and CAD at the very secondary industrial school where I had once studied — a return I had not planned, but deeply valued.
With my academic journey finally and successfully complete, I am now looking for full-time work with an architectural practice abroad. I am seeking a role at the exact joint where architecture meets structural intelligence, approaching architecture as an engineer and engineering as an architect.