Erik Petrus is an architect, urban planner, and architectural theorist with international reach. Since 2017, he has led his own studio, Erik Petrus Architects, where he designs projects across different scales and typologies – from interiors and family villas to residential and hotel complexes, cultural, civic, and public buildings, as well as sacred architecture. His work extends beyond the Czech Republic, notably into Indonesia.
His creations are characterized by the fusion of European and Southeast Asian approaches to architecture, with an emphasis on harmony between interior and exterior, thoughtful use of natural light, materials, and space. In Indonesia, he focuses on sensitively integrating contemporary architecture into local culture, traditional building principles, and the conditions of the tropical climate. The inspiration he draws from Indonesian philosophy and aesthetics also resonates in his projects realized in the Czech Republic. His designs are distinguished by lofty spaces, vistas, visual axes, moments of surprise, and a strong sense of detail and atmosphere. A recurring theme in his work is his fascination with geometry – circles, ellipses, squares, rectangles, and triangles – which he uses to organize space and create emotionally powerful architectural experiences. His projects often feature natural, sensorially engaging materials such as exotic woods, marble, or travertine, which bring depth, texture, and expressive mass to the buildings.
He studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague under Ladislav Lábus and also pursued studies at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. This experience deeply influenced his architectural outlook and strengthened his interest in intercultural dialogue and the Asian context. After his studies, he worked for several years at Eva Jiřičná’s studio, which further shaped his architectural approach and aesthetic sensibility.
In addition to his architectural practice, he is engaged in theoretical and research work. His research focuses primarily on the typology of residential buildings and issues of sustainable urban development, with townhouses as his main subject of interest – their spatial types, possibilities of implementation in the Czech context, and legal framework. He addressed this topic already in his doctoral studies and continues to pursue it today with the aim of supporting their realization in the Czech environment. On a theoretical level, he concentrates on exploring the spatial aspects of architecture’s impact on people and the transformation of architectural forms across cultures and time.
He is the founder and guarantor of the course Architecture in Asia at the Institute of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, where he teaches about traditional, religious, and modern architecture across the Asian continent – from Buddhist and Hindu structures, through Islamic mosques and Christian missionary churches, to colonial heritage, tropical modernism, Japanese metabolism, contemporary vernacular architecture, and new forms of urban development.
He also leads the course City Design: A Creative Approach to Urbanism on the online platform Skvot, lectures on Czech and European architecture at the Faculty of Architecture of Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta, and speaks at international universities, conferences, and professional debates. He serves as a juror for the world’s largest student architectural competition – INSPIRELI AWARDS, and is a member of the Art History Society (UHS), where he actively contributes to research in art and architectural history as well as reflections on current cultural challenges.
