Architects want to declare the Parkhotel in Holešovice a cultural monument

Prague - The Ministry of Culture (MK) will consider whether the Parkhotel in Holešovice, Prague, should be designated as a cultural monument. The proposal for this building from the 1960s to become a cultural landmark was submitted by experts from the Faculty of Architecture at the Czech Technical University. "We are publishing this announcement among other reasons because otherwise it is not possible to find information about which buildings are currently proposed for registration as immovable cultural monuments and are being processed," Klára Brůhová from the Institute of Theory and History of Architecture at the mentioned faculty told ČTK today.

MK only publishes the results of proceedings on declaring something a cultural monument, which can take many months. Currently, it is reassessing a group of buildings of Transgas on Vinohradská Street in Prague, buildings from the early 1970s. The owner wants to replace them with new ones. MK has not declared them as monuments, and following an appeal, the cases are being dealt with by the Minister's commission, and the outcome should be known by the end of April.

Another significant building from the period between World War II and 1989, whose potential monument protection the ministry has been addressing for over a year, is the Thermal Hotel in Karlovy Vary. As MK spokesperson Simona Cigánková told ČTK today, the proceedings were suspended last fall at the request of a participant in the proceedings because they wanted to supplement the materials for the decision. "We suspended the proceedings for 90 days, and in mid-February, the administrative proceedings were resumed," she stated.

In November last year, proceedings were initiated to declare the Kotva department store in Prague as a monument. Among comparable buildings from the same time, the Máj department store in Prague has been declared a monument. The Ještěd department store in Liberec, from the same architectural studio SIAL, did not receive state protection and was demolished for new construction. Another well-known building that has already been demolished is the Prague Hotel Praha. A few weeks ago, an automatic telephone exchange in Dejvice was demolished - it was designed by architect Václav Aulický, one of the authors of Transgas and the Žižkov television tower.

Owners of public buildings from the second half of the 20th century argue that they correspond to the time of their origin and their operation is unmanageably costly. However, experts do not have a uniform opinion on buildings from this period; only a potential declaration as a cultural monument, made by the Ministry of Culture, can save them. According to some architecture and heritage care experts, the ministry approaches the protection of buildings from the years 1945 to 1989 selectively.

The office claims that it assesses buildings responsibly. Historian Rostislav Švácha pointed out that since 2007, MK has not declared a single post-war building as a monument. According to experts, an entire architectural layer is disappearing – at a time when the professional public is already capable of appreciating its quality.

The authors of the proposal to declare the Parkhotel a cultural monument argue that it is one of the outstanding examples of late modernism in 1960s architecture in Czech territory and represents the peak of Czech hotel architecture. "The object is among the first buildings that, after years of socialist realism and a period of conservative artistic ethos, turned towards a freer modernist architecture, for which Czechoslovakia became renowned in the interwar era," Brůhová noted.