Jaroslav Otruba – designer, architect and artist

Jaroslav Otruba was born in Olomouc in 1916, and entire family moved to Prague in 1927. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague, where he then worked as an assistant. However, he did not conclude his studies within the usual term, because during the Second World War universities in Czechoslovakia had been closed down by the Nazis. Therefore, he only passed the final state examination later, in 1945.

He gathered his first professional experience at the renowned architectural studio Stalmach & Svoboda. His most important projects include the Atlas in Karlin, and the headquarters of the State Institute of Transportation Design in Žižkov. He participated in many architectural tenders, both at home and abroad. His most important award-winning tender projects include the State Theatre and Opera building in Brno, the central train station building in Prague, and the geyser colonnade in Karlovy Vary, which was actually part of a broader architectural and urban design concept for the spa town centre that was never implemented in its entirety. Noteworthy competitions abroad include the tender for the construction of the local city hall in Toronto or the project for a memorial to the victims of Auschwitz . 

Starting in 1971, Otruba became the chief architect of the prague metro. Together with other architects he designed the metro stations of the lines A and C. He remained with the company Metroprojekt until retirement and kept up his architectural activities until the 1990s. An interesting fact of his life is that he never had his own architectural and painting studio.