Tearing down 60s architecture

Within a few weeks, bulldozers will start tearing down the Ještěd department store in Liberec. A number of buildings from the 1960s and 70s will most likely meet a similar fate. Should we feel bad about that? What do we do with socialist-era architecture? Tear it down or protect it? Historians, preservationists and just about everyone else in the Czech Republic is trying to answer these questions as buildings from that era can be found all over the country and we have to live with them.

Picture this: Near the Philosophical Faculty in Prague, tram number 17 enters a tunnel, which leads under Kaprova street, under Old Town and all the way to the Main Train Station. An underground tram route is practical, but during its construction dozens of historical buildings were torn down and so was a part of the Karolinum, the oldest part of the Czech Republic's oldest university. Everything was rebuilt again in the form of panel houses. The Dalai Lama gave a lecture at the Cultural Palace (the Congress Centre) at the Prague Castle, right on Hradčany square. From the terraces of the centre, you can admire the marvellous views of the city – marred only by the giant panel high rises that have replaced the historic quarter of Žižkov. Don't look for the TV tower, however; it stands on Petřín.

Communist churches

It's only a matter of luck that none of these projects were carried out because all the plans were only a step away from being greenlighted. In other parts of the country, bold visions led to tragic consequences. Many buildings in the historical centres of Czech and Moravian towns were torn down in the 1960s and 70s to make room for new department stores, cultural centres and the Communist Party's administration buildings [dubbed „communist churches“ – komunistický kostel, kokos for short]. Rows of panel high rises were built around historical downtowns, destroying a city's character. Socialist-era urban planning was the epitome of stupid clumsiness.

Not many people like these buildings. But alongside the masses of grey concrete, there were also structures that earned the admiration of international architectural publications. In the 1960s, they brought attention to Czechoslovakia, just like New Wave films did. The 1960s were the golden era for architecture here, and even in the 1970s there were some good projects being built. Now the time has come to weed out those projects that were above average and those that are atrocious, before everything from that era is torn down or rebuilt without much though.

„Functionalist monuments started gaining historical protection in the 1960s, 40 years after being built. At first it was just the experts discussing it. Now almost everyone knows that pre-war architecture is valuable,“ said architectural historian Rostislav Švácha. He cites the example of Vila Tugendhat in Brno. In 1963 it was quietly given heritage status. Today it is a first-class Brno attraction, included on the UNESCO list.

Švácha has already proposed that a number of buildings from the 60s and 70s be given historical protection. They include the Máj department store [now Tesco on Národní třída in Prague], the Kotva department store, the Institute of Molecular Chemistry in Prague, the former Czechoslovak parliament building [later the RFE/RL headquarters at the top of Wenceslas Square]. Cutover is still awaiting the verdict; the other buildings have been granted heritage status. Also on the list is a hotel apartment building, an 11-floor high rise, which is part of Prague's Invalidovna housing project, completed in 1965.

Utopian visions

The hotel apartment building [known as hotelák] is well known among Czechs. It was built near the Invalidovna metro station to house the chosen elite. The building had a reception, modern furnishings and an elegant tin facade.

The Dejls have been living on the fifth floor of the building for 25 years now. When they moved into this „hotel-style housing“, it still included all the full services. „On set days we would go down to the cleaning room, where there would be folded clean bed linen. We would deposit our dirty linen. The lady would write down our names and we would be given clean linen in exchange,“ recalls Jiří Dejl.

The Dejls got the flat because their brother in law had contacts in the film industry in Barrandov. They moved with very few things because the flat already had everything, including furniture. „Everyone had the same wall shelf and the same beds. We had to pay maybe about CZK 20 a month for using the furnishings,“ says Dejl.

The building was the product of the optimistic, utopian visions of the 1960s. It promised easy living. Most of the flats here are tiny – only 26 square metres. But the layout is well thought out. There is a kitchen with a dining table, separated from the living area with glass doors, and a curtain separates a sleeping area from the rest of the flat. In other words, a functional machine for living, as envisioned by Le Corbusier, the guru of modernist architecture.

In 2001 this technical and social experiment was given heritage status. But it doesn't look much like a landmark now. The reception is torn out, the windows are broken, the aluminium squares on the facade are grey and splotchy like after a chemical attack. The Dejls are one of the three remaining tenants. The owner, Pražská správa nemovitostí, has not offered them any adequate replacement housing yet. If it does and the families move out, reconstruction could begin. But the company must take as much care with the reconstruction as if it were a Baroque chateau, and polish the aluminum squares one by one.

Modern landmarks

„This is supposed to be a landmark? A monument to the communists maybe,“ says a neighbour from the building across the street. Other neighbours also don't have particularly nice things to say about the hotelák. Ugly. Best tear it down. I wouldn't miss it. Many buildings from that era evoke similar sentiments.

Neither experts nor lay people are able to agree on the buildings' quality. Perhaps the only structure from that period that has become popular is the TV transmitter that sits atop Ještěd hill. It has become a popular place for trips and spending a night at the hotel there is considered a cool thing to do.

At the beginning of this year, the book Architecture of the 60s (Arichitektural 60. let) was published, becoming one of the first publications to map the most productive decade of the socialist regime. The buildings cover 500 pages. Why are these structures so unpopular among Czechs and Moravians?

„There is lack of reflection about socialist architecture. People don't really distinguish between architecture of the 60s and later normalisation-era architecture, which put a stamp of ugliness and arrogance to all the buildings,“ says Richard Biegel, an art historian and the executive head of the Klub za starou Prahu, a historical preservation society.

It's not so surprising. Czech society does not particularly like to recall the long years of socialism and these buildings serve as strong reminders of that era.

Brutalism in white

Věra Machoninová used to be one of Czechoslovakia's best architects. Her work was bold; she was sort of like the Věra Chytilová of Czech architecture. The 1960s for her truly were the golden years. With her husband, she designed hotel Thermal in Karlovy Vary, the Kotva department store and the Czechoslovak embassy in Berlin.

In 1952, the 24-year-old architect married Vladimír Machonin, a colleague who was eight years older. Shortly after the war, the socialist regime streamed nearly all architects into giant studios with hundreds of employees. They were sort of architecture factories, where anything from factories to cultural centres were designed. But the Machonins were ambitious and they didn't want to be a cog in the wheel. They succeeded in doing something almost unthinkable in that time: They opened their own architectural studio.

They had good commissions and won in several architectural competitions, but the creative euphoria came to an end with the arrival of the Soviet army in 1968.

The euphoria gave way to lethargy in Czech society as well as in architecture. Svaz architektů, an association of architects, was disbanded, and a new group was created in 1972. Anyone who wanted to join had to sign a document pledging his loyalty and his support for the invasion of the Soviet army. Only members of this association could take part in architectural competitions, and there was less creative work.

To this day, architectural historians admire the details in buildings like Thermal: Everything has its own design. The furniture and the lamps were designed to go with the font on information signs and sculptures in the park. Dům bytové kultury is a building that is just as complex. Every detail is unique, specially designed, including the red panels on the ceiling. Together with the red tin on the escalators and the raw concrete on the walls, it creates a bold backdrop for shopping.

Today the interior looks completely different. The strong red tones have been painted over and are now boringly white. The shopping area is divided into small shops with plaster panels and the logic of the original layout no longer applies. „I am very tired of this. These buildings are gradually being destroyed. For us it was always important that there was a connection between the interior and the exterior. That was the 60s, this agreement. Now it's all disappearing,“ says Machoninová sadly.

The charm is gone

A law about authorship vaguely says that it is only possible to interfere with a work of architecture without the author's permission if „it is absolutely necessary“ and so long as „the value of the work is preserved“.

The biggest supporter of protecting this type of buildings is probably Rostislav Švácha, an architectural historian, who wants these structures to be given heritage status. „They serve as documents of another era, and yet they are quickly disappearing,“ says Švácha. They are being torn down or reconstructed in such a way that they lose all their original charm: The details, the scale, the elegance – all that is being destroyed. „A typical example are so-called hanging facades. Soon there will be none left,“ says Švácha. And yet, at the time, this was a technologically advanced system that allowed glass or stone panels to hang on the skeleton of a building. Fixing them is very expensive.

So far, one of the first buildings of this type, the Institute of Molecular Chemistry, designed by Karel Prager and built in 1965, was successfully reconstructed. The ČKD building at Wenceslas Square was also reconstructed carefully, with the help of Alena Šrámková, the author who created it. The building is now owned by the fashion chain store New Yorker.

But opinions on the protection of buildings from the 60s vary. Jakub Kynčl, a young architect from Brno, is a member of Docomomo, an association of fans of modern architecture, which looks for modern architectural landmarks all over the world. Kynčl says one must be careful about reconstructing these buildings. „A number of buildings from that era have technical problems. In such situations, reconstruction can be problematic,“ he says. „Not every building can be saved.“

60,000 flats a year

And then there are the socialist-era architectural disasters. It is hard to say who is responsible. The architects who designed the projects are in many cases no longer alive. But those still living won't say much. They all worked for a big state architectural company and just followed orders. Every project had to be approved by state construction companies, and much of the blame for bad buildings lies with these companies. Their only goal was to build as much as possible as quickly and as cheaply as possible, and to stick to the plan. (According to statistics, in the era of panel high rises, a million flats were constructed from the 60s to the 80s. In the 80s, more than 60,000 flats were built each year.) The only acceptable technology was construction using pre-fab concrete panels. Steel and wood were strategic resources, and it was not allowed to build using these materials.

There weren't many options even when it came to urban planning. Giant construction companies had to build in a way that allowed them to build as many panel houses as possible from one crane line to the next.

Huge Prague housing projects like Bohnice, Modřany and Jižní Město got out of control and are incredibly chaotic and poorly thought-out.

Here we must note that similar mistakes happened even in western cities. All of Europe was dealing with the same problems: a housing crisis, the construction of housing projects and the reconstruction of decrepit city centres.

But the situation in Czechoslovakia was worse because of the inflexible construction industry and the general stupidity of the socialist regime. „Being an architect was a thankless job because in many cases, all they wanted from you was to be able to plan out the right number of flats in a panel high rise. What's more, the division of labour in the state-run architectural studios mean responsibility was spread very thinly,“ says Richard Biegel, an art historian and the executive head of Klub za starou Prahu, a historical preservation society. „But in a way, it's not so different today,“ he adds. „The worst projects these days are designed by mediocre architects hired by companies. Their names will soon be forgotten.“