In October 2025, a month after your 100th birthday, you received the Medal for Merit to the State in the Field of Technology from the President of the Republic, Petr Pavel. Do you see this award as the greatest professional recognition you could have received?
I think so. It is a great recognition of my professional work. I don't even know if anyone from the construction industry has received a similar award before, it was usually received by public figures who are well-known to the general public.
What moment or project was a turning point in your career?
As a researcher, it was crucial for me to promote the then unknown prestressed concrete, which proved very successful and is still widely used in civil engineering today. Since few people knew about it at the time, there were more opportunities to come up with a new procedure that simplified and improved the quality of bridge construction and made it possible, for example, to design concrete bridges with much larger spans.
Looking back, what career achievement are you most proud of today?
I have introduced many technical procedures and implemented a number of projects. I consider my greatest success to be the promotion of the Nuselský Bridge project – a demanding, attractive and slender continuous girder structure with a new method of construction without a ring – in competition with a number of other designs. The competition assessed 30 designs from leading engineers and several professors, and I was among the youngest in the competition at the time.
A significant part of your professional life is connected with the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague, where you studied and worked for a long time. In what areas did this cooperation take place and what did it mean to you personally?
The cooperation with the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University was of two types. On the one hand, it was a longer-term theoretical cooperation with a number of important personalities who worked at the faculty. The output of this cooperation was, for example, assessing the suitability of prestressed concrete and considering how to introduce it into new construction procedures. I have also often participated in defenses and opponents of research tasks, for example, I was a member of the state commission for the defense of doctoral dissertations for 17 years.
What would you recommend to today's young engineers, students and graduates of this faculty who are at the beginning of their professional careers?
So that they come up with technically and computationally substantiated designs that stand up to the same level as in other culturally advanced European countries. To do this, you need to know construction theory and have an overview of the economically and technically efficient design and construction of bridges and other structures. It is important to base yourself primarily on the correct design assumptions that will lead to a structurally reasonable and economical solution with the aim of creating on this basis a purposeful and aesthetic structure that is not subject to a momentary effect, but is purposeful and acceptable throughout its service life. From the example of many buildings, we know that the correct static concept of a structure in accordance with the possibility of reasonable execution also leads to a permanently favorable aesthetic concept.
A bold structure that changed the face of the Prague valley
What was unique about your design for the Nusel Bridge and what was its main advantage?
Let's consider that in 1958, when the competition was announced, prestressed concrete was in its infancy, having only been used for 8 years to design small buildings, mainly from prefabricated beams. I wanted to design an aesthetically pleasing structure that would disturb and shade the beautiful city valley as little as possible, a mere strip of tube above the roofs of the houses. The bridge piers are almost invisible from a distance between the houses. For the first time, I designed a continuous supporting structure without expansion joints and the concreting of a large structure in a flash (without the construction of rings) for such a wide bridge. This also meant new ideas for the implementation, such as a narrow supporting tube and the additional connection of side sidewalks. It was also necessary to solve thermal expansion by means of deformations of slender pillars, to adjust the supporting structure for a suitable process of concreting in a flash, and a number of other modifications resulting from this. It was the first and only design of a progressive prestressed structure in our country and the only design in the competition. I could not find any similar example in foreign literature, because it probably did not exist at that time. In addition, there was no standard for prestressed concrete at all.
What were the main technical challenges associated with the construction of the Nuselský Bridge?
The construction of the Nuselský Bridge was considered since 1920 and a total of about 100 designs were submitted in competitions and outside of them. In later years, the idea of running an underground tram or metro over the bridge was also considered. Interest in the construction of the bridge grew with the increasing traffic, for which the valley was an obstacle. Therefore, it was an extraordinary challenge to participate in the competition and try to promote your own design, which, as it later turned out, was truly progressive and also economical.
Do you still follow the events in your field and the current development of bridge construction today?
Today, due to my age, I cannot and do not want to interfere in opinions on the development of the construction industry. I partly follow the current state of the art from magazines and general information about bridges, but that is only my personal interest, which is perhaps no longer important.
What do you consider to be the greatest professional challenge of today's bridge construction?
Building bridges with regard to the development of the city, the growth of its population and the increasing standard of living. Submitting theoretically and structurally well-thought-out projects. Adhering to a purposeful, progressive and economical technical solution, the result of which is an aesthetic bridge structure, corresponding to the level of its time and in line with expected future development. Not giving too much weight to proposals characterized by seemingly attractive and often expensive solutions, which, due to rapid technical development, may soon prove to be unsuitable and expensive to maintain.
Is there something that you wanted to implement in your professional career, but did not have the opportunity to do so?
That's always the case. The working life of one person is just a certain period of time in the continuous progression of building solutions, which will be taken care of by subsequent generations, who will probably live in a different social environment. It would be interesting to participate, for example, in the development of Prague bridges, which are currently in the forefront of interest, such as Libeňský or Výtoňský, and to promote more modern structures that would help solve traffic problems in Prague, which unfortunately, as I can only observe, is not very successful.
If you were starting over today, would you go down the construction route again?
Looking back, I was very satisfied with the choice of construction as my job for several reasons. Even today, I consider this activity to be suitable and purposeful. However, a lot has changed and new, unexpected and also interesting job opportunities have arisen and will continue to arise. I would probably have to at least consider it after all.
Thank you for the interview.
Tereza Mašínová, SciComHub
In 2025, the President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, awarded Mr. Jan Vítek the Medal of Merit.
Nusle Bridge (1973)
Nová Pec (at the end of Lipno), a unique building in its time (from 1959)