Architecture of Conversions - Invitation to the Exhibition at GJF

Let's not drown abandoned industrial sites
Ten years ago, the exhibition Industrial Traces - Architecture of Conversions in the Czech Republic 2000–2005 at Karlin Studios was a revelation for many visitors. It changed the public's perception of industrial sites, of devastated and abandoned factories, warehouses, and breweries. What has changed since then? On Wednesday, December 17, the exhibition of successful transformations of industrial objects for new purposes will open at the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery in Prague. It will showcase the best, most highly valued, distinctive, recognized, and alternative examples of realizations in the Czech Republic over the past ten years. However, it is not just about the buildings but also about the project authors, the social context, obstacles, and challenges that needed to be addressed.

The team from the Research Centre for Industrial Heritage of the Faculty of Architecture CTU, led by Benjamin Fragner, selected the most successful examples from projects completed between 2005 and 2015. Conceptually, the exhibition titled Architecture of Conversions is divided into five thematic blocks according to the new functions they have adopted, the motivations that led to the change… Each block includes exemplary cases.

The realizations included in the retrospective project Architecture of Conversions had to meet demanding criteria in relation to the legacy of the original use and values. The curatorial team divided the projects for the needs of the exhibition according to newly defined functions: from utility buildings (offices, warehouses) or commercial (shops, restaurants), to residential (apartments, hotels), to publicly accessible (museums, libraries) and transitional ones, which are accessed temporarily or are used for so-called initiating projects, often associated with culture and other creative fields.

Visitors to the Jaroslav Fragner Gallery will be able to compare the transformations of selected examples – from their initial state, through the recent past to their new life. These include, for instance, the recently completed transformation of the boiler room of Breitfeld, Daněk and Co. into the administrative building Karlin Hall I in Prague 8, the former Opava Municipal Brewery, which has been integrated into the new social and commercial center Breda & Weinstein, or the creatively explored transformation of part of the Vítkovice complex.

Relics of Czech industrial past and their meaningful revival have long been a central theme of the Industrial Traces platform, with which the exhibition Architecture of Conversions is closely associated. The exhibition is part of the project Industrial Topography and will be followed in January by a comprehensive publication of the same name, mapping successful transformations of industrial buildings. “The book will not merely be a collection of striking buildings – it also reflects the social atmosphere in which these buildings underwent or are undergoing transformation,” specifies Benjamin Fragner, head of the Research Centre for Industrial Heritage at the Faculty of Architecture CTU in Prague.

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