"SOUL OF THE CITY" -THE PRAGUE OLD-TOWN TOWN HALL
- The completion of the old Town Hall has fascinated architects for more than a hundred years. Since 1899, eight competitions have been written and perhaps hundreds of proposals have been drawn. We devote ourselves to this issue with breaks since the last 198a7-88 competition, which has brought many stimuli, but not a more pronounced consensus for solutions.
We rely on athe belief that it is necessary to find a convincing functional filling and design, which will be acceptable to the community of protectors of monuments and on the other side of the architectural community, which works more-less in the spirit of already "classic" modern architecture, but primarily adopted of the public.
The ambition of our proposal is to revive the discussion, which could lead to the announcement of the last competition. - Existing trees of the “park”
For the archaeological and building as well as historical research of the lot known as the “Prague Pompey", we propose to replant the trees to other more suitable places as a greeting from the heart of the capital. This would free up the space where older elements of the Town Hall buildings are quite surely preserved. - The urban solution of the Old-Town Square with the extension of the Town Hall
In our opinion, there is a consistent solution of the urbanism of the square to respect the inherited situation with acceptance of the current inlet of Pařížská boulevard from the beginning of the 20th century. The corner of the new building is inspired in many ways by the torn-down Kren house, but it moves deeper into the "rank" of the western front of the square. The extinct street at the original town hall is replaced by a passage. This solution allows to create the entire fluent operation of internally intricate set. Covering of lower parts of the St. Nicholas Church as seen from the Old-Town Square corresponds to the historical situation from the middle ages up to the 20th century. The view of the church from the renewed space of today's Franz Kafka Square, and the original Chicken market, will be preserved.
On the ground floor and the basement of the corner "house", there is located an entrance to the Prague underground railway, for which the tunnel will be excavated from the station Kaprova street, which was reckoned with already during construction of this station. - The plan of the new Town Hall in interplay with the square
The design of the grid plan is based on the superior geometric structure common also for the design of the square pavement. In addition to the historic Prague Meridian, it introduces the "Prague Parallel” that is the axis of the western façade of the Týn temple and the dominant of the extension, the façade with the stained-glass window of "Mother Prague", intersecting the meridian in the "City Centre ". This is the very centre of the Square and also the centre of the circumscribed circle, the contour of the main façade. - Pavement of the middle of the square
Preservation of the pavement adjacent to the existing building of the square seems logical to us. Centrally, we propose to pave a formation evoking our great home, the Milky Way. The geometry also allows the possible location of the Marian column. - Description of the new extension
- The house next to the tower
Fortunately, an agreement of expert opinions could be found in the shaping of the building adjacent to the Town-Hall Tower, where a consensus was established to create a "creative copy" of the façade of the important medieval Parléř's wing, which was later rebuilt and in the 19th century replaced by a neo-baroque wing, torn down in 1945 after the town hall was destroyed by fire.
However, respecting this view, we propose to maintain the existing neo-Gothic travé with a new superstructure of the copy of the Parléř's façade. In this "house", we propose to place on the floor a ceremonial meeting hall of authorities of the Prague municipality. - The four-part façade as a homage to the phenomenon of old Prague.
To the Parléř façade, there is ranking the "House at the Prague Muse" (that of magic, imagination, intuition) as a figural and floral sculpture and a loggia system with a portico formed by vertical screens. The face of the muse is formed by the "Prague Gong". Above the Muse, we place a large semi-translucent screen for transmitting the performances from the building to the entire audience of the square. The façade culminates in the "Gable of the four Prague towns". - The building for "permanent cultural festival"
The next parts of the extension are devoted to cultural activities for the inhabitants of Prague and also to visitors of the capital - "Prague welcoming". One of the most important spaces is the multipurpose hall "The Soul of the Town" for about 650 spectators. On the ground floor we place a “Cine –Asylum” with a distinctive leisure function, while we place a zone of children games, the "Poesis" above the main hall.
The building is opened to the square by an external stage the "Heart wide open", which would solve today's problem of temporary scenes for various purposes. - The “House at the Mother of Cities"
has a totemic stained-glass window with a motif of the panorama of Prague that is conceived as a beautiful female face, framed by floral clusters changing with seasons. Above the cornice, there is placed a "crown" with towers from fourteen Czech counties. The anthropomorphic façade is crowned by an architectural roof sculpture "Antenna of Cultures", which is an increase of the circular construction of screens of the polymusic space on the roof of the building. - The corner of the extension to St. Nicholas Church
It is devoted to a multi-storey space of café with a spiral inner ramp as high as up to the roof. The accent of the façade is formed by the plant sculpture "Prague Genius (Guardian)" with a set of "space suits" for observing the city. - The "Old-Town Arena"
extends into the adjacent inner courtyard and it partially bridges the area of the former Chicken market. It is an open light spatial construction of ramps around the spatial theatre. It also serves as an escape route from the higher floors of the building. It is enveloped by a light laminated foil. - The roof landscape,
so called "Earthly Paradise" is intended to view the Old Town, the getting together and cultural activities (performances, dancing, etc.). It is celebration of the Czech landscape with the Moldau, the Elbe and the mountains surrounding the historical Czech basin with the mythical space "Czechhenge" nearly on the site of the Mont Říp and a green hill called the "Garden of Cultures". On the whole roof we reckon with planting the largest amount of quality greenery.
Under the green hill, there is located the meditation space of "Spirit of the City". Above the copy of the Parléř's façade in the attic, there is an ecumenical space of "Common Breath", with a roof motif of a face looking into the heavens. - Creative background, morphology and "dramaturgy" of completion
The design is intentionally orientated to archetypal bases, trying to respect the principles of the Prague "Genius loci", as the architect Christian Norberg Schulz convincingly has interpreted it. - "The head, the forehead” of the square"
This basic attribute concerning the western front of the Old-Town Square was very aptly postulated by the architect Alena Šrámková. Further, fully respecting this premise, our proposal is more "classical" than "modernistic", because it seeks to merge as much as possible with the existing town structure. It is also inspired by the proven approach by the architect Osvald Polívka from the beginning of the 20th century in relation to the design of the northern front of the square, as the façades of the new buildings were conceived very conservatively as "Neo – Neo-Baroque". We imagine the front of the extension as a rank of "houses" with a classic predominance of window openings in full walls. In contrast, the stained-glass window of the central façade is understood as "totemic", in a large-scale, legibly to the most general audience. - "Dramaturgy" of the extension
Our concept relies on anthropomorphic connotations (face, spine, heart, hands, lungs, belly). In addition, the references to spirit, soul, breath, but also to exact sciences are important (the "mázhauz” is structured by pillars according to the 2nd Keppler theorem). The cycle of life is a motif of the corner house. The structure of the main façade is led by music, an important part of Czech culture, its rhythm and structure.
The interior of the building should be naturally solved in the contemporary spirit, corresponding to today's latest technologies (screens in many variants, glass ceilings in a four-storey foyer around the main hall, etc.) On the façade, an amount of green is applied as a substitute for the trees of the present park from the nineteen nineties. The rear front of the building will be treated as a continuous vertical green wall. - Old-Square and the new "Permanent Festival"
We believe that Prague would certainly benefit, even as its new hot spot, from a good solved architectural act emphasizing e. g. the existential reflection of the man and the civilization. It would also solve the fundamental problem of one of the most beautiful squares, which has long been missing a whole front, its soul and face would be re-created and its cultural functions would be strongly supported.
PaBatelier, 2019 - Contact: Pavol Bauer, Krížna 17, 811 07 Bratislava, Slovak Republic
- Tel.: 00421 901 701 958, E-mail: pali.bauer@gmail.com
Copyright © 2024 Staromak Prague Town Hall Completion – Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Powered by GoDaddy Website Builder