On the evening of September 19, the date of the signing of the university’s founding decree, Špilberk castle will turn red to represent Brno’s technical university. Title image: VISUALOVE and Petr Horálek, Hvězdárna a planetárium Brno.
Brno, Sep 19 (BD) – On September 19, 1899, Emperor František Josef I signed a document establishing the Czech Technical University in Brno (VUT), the oldest university in Brno and the successor to the Technical College in Brno, established by the Provincial Assembly of the Margraviate of Moravia in 1849. At the beginning, the university had just four enthusiastic professors.
Now, 120 years later, VUT has eight faculties, three university institutes and seven research centers, and is home to almost 19,000 students, the most of any technical university in the Czech Republic. VUT is now an internationally recognized scienctific research and educational institution that holds it own in rankings of technical schools around the world.
To mark the 120th anniversary of the university, Špilberk castle will be illuminated in the university’s traditional colour red, from 10pm on Thursday September 19. The visualization was created by VISUALOVE with the help of Petr Horálek from Brno Observatory. “All night until the morning, Špilberk will be illuminated in red, the color of the Brno Technical University. We are particularly pleased that the strength lighting will be provided by VISUALOVE, who are two graduates of our school,” said Petr Štěpánek, Rector of VUT.
At the same time, the university is entering the second half of its program of celebrations, to coincide with the beginning of the new academic year. A special edition of the university magazine “Events at VUT” will be released on the same date to mark the occasion.
According to Pavel Maxera, the student chairman of the VUT Academic Senate, which is organizing the event at Špilberk: “In September and October we will have two music festivals, Hudba z FEKTu and FASTfest. In November, anyone interested can run on the engineering stairs in the tallest university building in the Republic, which was for a long time the tallest building in Brno.” The celebrations will end on December 6 with the VUT Ball at the Brno Exhibition Center, which according to organizer Anna Kruljacová was the largest ball in the Czech Republic last year.
In addition to those events, the VUT Academic Assembly will take place on November 14, where medals and awards will be presented to students and employees of VUT, and the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution will be commemorated. That morning, two foreign scientists will receive the honorary title of Doctor Honoris Causa: Austrian Ulrike Diebold and American Ralph Ford.
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