John Hejduk’s The House of the Suicide and The House of the Mother of the Suicide  in show
John Hejduk’s The House of the Suicide and The House of the Mother of the Suicide in show © James Williamson

John Hejduk’s pair of architectural structures, The House of the Suicide and the House of the Mother of the Suicide, are once again on view in Prague. Inspired by a poem by David Shapiro, the pieces were first designed in the late 1980s as an ephemeral memorial in tribute to the 1969 self-immolation of the Czech dissident Jan Palach whose death was in protest of the 1968 Soviet invasion. On January 16 permanent versions of the two structures were installed in Jan Palach Square (formerly Red Army Square), with a plaque that displays Shapiro’s poem, “The Funeral of Jan Palach.”