Josef Chaloupka House of services for the blind, TyfloCentrum Brno

Josef Chaloupka House of Services for the Blind , located on Chaloupkova Street in Královo Pole, is the headquarters of the non-profit organisation TyfloCentrum Brno. The centre provides comprehensive social services to blind and partially sighted people, aiming to increase their personal independence and ease their integration into society.

The current building was constructed on the site of the original two-storey family house of the Brno poet Josef Chaloupka (1898–1930), who bequeathed it for the benefit of blind people. After Chaloupka’s death, his family transferred it in 1937 to the Support Society of Independent Blind People, which ran a hostel and workshops for the blind there until it was dissolved in 1952. In 1953, Chaloupka's house was taken over by Brno’s Drutěva, a production cooperative for disabled people, which operated there until 1990. At that point, the severely dilapidated house was handed over to the Czech Union of the Blind and Partially Sighted. After essential repairs were made, the house resumed its service to visually impaired people. Between 1992 and 2000, the first Blind Museum in the Czech Republic was housed there, collecting tools for the visually impaired, preserving archival documents, and illustrating the lives of people with visual disabilities. Its collection is now part of the Technical Museum in Brno and is presented in the permanent exhibition titled The Culture of the Blind. In 2005, TyfloCentrum Brno, a non-profit organisation founded by the United Organisation of the Blind and Partially Sighted as a successor to the Czech Union of the Blind and Partially Sighted, became the owner of the building.

TyfloCentrum Brno gradually expanded and, from 2006, began building regional centres in Břeclav, Znojmo, Vyškov, and Moravský Krumlov as part of the Network of Integration Centres for Visually Impaired Citizens of the South Moravian Region. Due to the high user demand for the historic building, which was already in very poor technical condition, the idea of demolishing it was considered. In 2011, TyfloCentrum Brno had to temporarily vacate the original Chaloupka House, and after securing funds from the Integrated Regional Operational Programme within the Brno Metropolitan Area for the construction of a new House of Services for the Blind and Partially Sighted, the building was finally demolished in 2018. The aim was to construct high-quality spaces for providing social services and their technical support. The construction of the new modern barrier-free building was completed between 2019 and 2020 according to the design by Ateliér Tišnovka. The purpose of the House of Services for the Blind is symbolised on its façade by a unique decorative element in the form of a three-dimensional sign in Braille.

TyfloCentrum Brno, o.p.s. has been providing essential services to blind people for 25 years, ranging from assistance with personal tasks to advice, reading services, and the provision of visual information. The centre also offers training in specific skills to increase clients' independence and self-sufficiency. A key part of the services are various activities that take into account the sensory impairment of the client, such as workshops at the HapAteliér. The centre currently supports nearly six hundred clients with visual impairments, half of whom are over fifty years old.