The death of one of Australia’s forgotten modernists has been reported in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times. Alex Jelinek, whose only fully realised architectural work is the Round House, at 10 Gawler Crescent, Deakin, died on 12 February 2007 aged 81.

Jelinek joined the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in 1946, where he studied architecture. The 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia banned private architectural practice and Jelinek, who saw no future living under such a regime, fled the country only weeks before he was due to graduate. He emigrated to Australia in 1950 and worked on the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme.

Jelinek gained his first architectural commission from Oxford-trained philosopher Bruce Benjamin, the second-cousin of Jelinek’s partner, landscape painter Lina Bryans: the remarkable Round House was the result.

Dr Roger Benjamin has written a fine obituary in the SMH.

• Alex Jelinek obituary
• View a profile of the Round House on this site