Born in the northern Czechoslovakian  town of Most in 1901, Heythum was an architect, scenarist, costume artist and furniture designer. In 1924 he graduated from the Czech Technical College in Prague. In 1935 he designed the Czech Pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair; two years later he designed the Glass Exhibit at the World Exhibition in Paris. In 1938, Heythum came to the U.S. to design the Czech Pavilion for the New York World's Fair and in 1941 took a position at the California Institute of Technology. In 1945 he moved to New York to accept a position as professor of architecture at Columbia University, but 1946 found him as professor and chair of the  Industrial Design department of Syracuse University. He and his wife Charlotta had a son, Jan Antonin, in 1947. Sometime after the war, he taught in Switzerland and in 1954 he died in Rottach, Germany.