<translation>Outdoor Exhibition: The Story of the Panel House in the Pardubice Region</translation>

Panel Buildings in Pardubice

From February 4 to April 19, 2015, Pardubice will host an outdoor exhibition titled The Story of Panel Buildings in the Pardubice Region, which will highlight the history and present of selected panel housing estates in Pardubice (Dukla, Polabiny, Karlovina, Dašická) and in Litomyšl (Comenius Square housing estate). This exhibition, freely accessible to the general public at the intersection of Jindřišská and Jiřího z Poděbrad streets in Karlovina, is the third exhibition in a traveling series dedicated to selected panel housing estates in various regions of the Czech Republic.

“We would like to show that not all housing estates are the same, that they do not necessarily have to be monotonous clusters of boxes designed by an anonymous team in a design institute,” explains the main author of the project Lucie Zadražilová from the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague. “Panel housing estates have their past, present, and in many cases, a development potential and represent a home for their residents. It would therefore be a mistake to close our eyes to the uniqueness of many of them and let ourselves be influenced by one-sided prejudices,” she adds.

In the Pardubice Region, four areas from the regional city made it to the final selection: Dukla was built from the late 40s to the late 50s, and its appearance was influenced by the doctrine of socialist realism. The extensive Polabiny is an example of urban and administrative solutions to housing estate construction based on the principle of districts; the first and second districts, which we focused on, were built in the 60s. In the vicinity of the historic core, the Karlovina housing estate was constructed at the turn of the 70s and 80s, featuring a composition of tower and slab buildings. The youngest area in our selection is the “micro-housing estate” Dašická from the second half of the 80s, which employs an atypical construction consisting of trapezoidal panels and brick infill. The facades are made of white and blue-gray ceramic cladding contrasting with red window frames – it is hard to believe that a panel building can look like this. The selection is complemented by the Comenius Square housing estate in Litomyšl, whose original design is relatively banal in architectural and urbanistic terms, but very interesting is the upgrade it received from the studio of Josef Pleskot in 2001–2002.

Very capable architects were often involved in the realization of these housing estates, who creatively developed the ideas of architects and urban planners from the interwar avant-garde. The exhibition also addresses issues of urbanism, apartment layouts, artistic decorations of the housing estates, and construction technologies. It does not overlook the question of the age, education, and professional structure of local residents and how these have changed since the time of construction. “With examples, we show what is happening to selected panel housing estates today, whether regeneration interventions have contributed to improving the living environment or, on the contrary, disrupted the genius loci of these areas,” adds Lucie Zadražilová.

The grant task Panel Housing Estates in the Czech Republic as Part of the Urban Living Environment: Evaluation and Presentation of Their Residential Potential is a five-year research and exhibition project involving nearly twenty historians of architecture, urban planners, conservationists, demographers, and other experts from museum and academic institutions. The project is academically endorsed by art historian Professor Rostislav Švácha, and it is institutionalized by the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague. The Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic supports the project within the grant program for research and development of national cultural identity (NAKI).

Alongside a comprehensive Czech-English monograph on the issues of housing estates and various expert texts and publications, the main output of the project is a series of thirteen exhibitions in various regional cities, culminating in a collective exhibition in Prague in 2017. The exhibition cycle is intended for those interested from both professional and lay audiences. The exhibition, designed by the architectural studio A1 Architects (Tereza Schneiderová, Lenka Křemenová, David Maštálka), resembles a stylized panel town. Six free-standing elements made of lightweight concrete were custom-made for the project by the company LIAS Vintířov. The graphic design was created by Štěpán Malovec.

Panel housing estates represent an important urbanistic, architectural, and historical phenomenon. Although they were the most typical and widespread form of mass housing construction from the 50s to the 80s and today, more than three million residents of the Czech Republic live in these estates (specifically, in the Pardubice Region, there are 82,695 residents, which is 17% of the total population in the region), research into their significance and socio-cultural role is still in its infancy. After years of one-sided criticism and rejection, we are now witnessing a growing interest in the topic of panel housing estates not only among professionals but also among contemporary artists.


Date of the event: February 4 – April 19, 2015
Address: Jindřišská/Jiřího z Poděbrad, Pardubice-Karlovina
Organizer of the exhibition: Museum of Applied Arts in Prague

More information HERE and HERE