David Pavlišta : Upper Square in Jablonec nad Nisou

Opponent's Review

It is difficult to write a review for a project that is exceptionally good. I will praise it, the committee will then criticize it, but the graduate will manage.
After reviewing and considering the context of the project, I pondered whether something like this would have occurred to me. Of course, I cannot say, but if it had, I would be proud of it.
David chose to address the so-called Upper Square. At present, it is essentially a road in a bend going uphill, with an adjacent parking area and a stone retaining wall supporting this area. That wall is important and will be discussed further. The place, called a square, closes off, or rather does not close off, the regular grid of street blocks from the town hall to the church. The surrounding streets end nowhere.
Creating a square is not so difficult. We all have a clear archetype in our heads: an area surrounded by appropriately sized buildings, usually with some kind of monument, a church, a plague column, a fountain... We also have the opposite archetype, a square as a space around a monument, I mean various variations of a block, to simplify it. David's square is a synthesis of both or of neither. He created a contemporary functioning public space where I can imagine a realistic film taking place. At the beginning, he asked the right questions and then, as I heard, after a long search found answers.
How did he manage that? He divided the sloped area into two horizontal surfaces, hence a square at two levels. He found the right ratio for where to place the step between the two levels and built a house into that step, not just one, but three houses, forming the structure of the city center. The first of the decisions I admire is the preservation of the existing, gently sloping curve of the original area along the perimeter of the square. Thus, the base of the existing buildings and the character of the surroundings remain largely unchanged. This is important. In that step, or cut into the original surface, a monumental staircase is designed on the axis of the street from the town hall (which I may or may not use, precisely because of the existing base). On both sides of the staircase are two, or rather three houses, of different weights, significance, and content. On the left is a residential building—a block, on the right a substantial library, with a restaurant or something social filling the step in between. Here I first come to the content and I will try to say a bold premise. For this project, the exact content is not so important. A description suffices: in the middle is public, entertaining, consumptive, in this case, a restaurant with bowling. A good decision. For the residential block, a description must suffice as well. The time contrast with the library is important—thus, in the block, people live, it is inhabited at night, and that is significant. Here I have the first two critical observations. The housing structure proposed in the block does not correspond to the image of the house or the place. I highly doubt that families with children would live in the house as the apartment structure is designed. If I were David, I would look for any other contents that include the notion of "home" and "to live." I would also think about a social provocation, that is, social housing. The second critique is more of a polemic: the house is too clear, readable, strict. If I were the author, right here, on this dominant point, I would allow myself some liberating humor, a slight reduction of seriousness and monumentality. Asymmetric symmetry, deformation, some scratch, I don’t know.
The library. Designing such a large volume to appear appropriate is challenging. In my view, it has succeeded in this case. I won’t analyze why. The shape of the library's volume achieved another trick, bending the axis of the existing street grid by a few degrees. Do you follow? Another two flies with one stroke. This is, after all, what I admire most about this project: with a single act, David resolves several problems, and moreover, the solutions mutually support and relate to each other.

Thus, the resulting ensemble functions as follows: it ends the axis from the town hall, which slows down at the point of level change with the staircase between two dominants. The third, incidental dominant, the existing church is on the upper surface, plus trees—overall, a hierarchically organized space. And now for me, the main peculiarity and strength of the whole solution. The use of the retaining wall. As if it hadn’t been mentioned until now. This square actually does not have a single street front; it is simultaneously a terrain cut, an overlook. That is an amazing image. Gradually, as I immerse into the structure of the three houses through the central axis, I reach a space that becomes increasingly intimate and simultaneously closer and closer to the hinted point. A breath and a view into the landscape. I search my memory. Which square is like this? I can’t remember; I have a buried image from Italy somewhere. The intimacy of the upper part of the square is enhanced by the existing church, which encloses the upper space between the library. An ideal connection between the historical and the new—another thread that runs throughout the project. The influence of Hans Kollhoff's works is visible; thus, the bridge between the historical and the new is obvious. The language used, solidity, comfort, strength, haptics refer, outside of time and beyond the Czech-Austrian trend of colorful wooden or concrete facades. It is not superficial.
Here is my biggest criticism. Just as my jaw dropped from the square on the edge of the cliff, moreover, a cliff formed by an existing, forgotten wall, and subsequently capped by this wall with the library built on the edge, which ceases to be a house only in the newly proposed volume, but altogether with the wall—therefore, I consider the library together with the wall as one new house—I cannot understand why David dilutes this strength by adding a pedestrian bridge to the edge of the wall and separating both. Why? One should have fought for that view, one should have reached that intimate space behind the library through the central area, enjoying the distinctiveness of the higher level of the square. They should have been given a choice: go below the cliff or go around the rock and discover a surprise. The library should have been part of the wall; it should have had exclusivity of the view, or rather control of the edge. Nothing in between. That weakens it. Maybe I seem like an idiot clinging to trivialities, but this is nonsense for such a good project. Imagine an island, a great island. And because it is great, I will make access to it through ten bridges. What happens then?
I could write further about how the project was preceded by careful analysis, that the city is actually searching for a place for the library, that there is an accurate analysis of the new and proposed, divided and structurally arranged according to functions in the project, which is important in relation to time, schemas of greenery, analyzing floor plans... It is not necessary.
I will slightly critique two more things. I am not entirely sure about the deviation of the street, or the road, that used to cross the flat area. From the plans, it looks like, I would have the impression in the car that I am wandering, suddenly I was led to a place of lesser significance. I would always check the possibility of keeping traffic in the square, as it is in France and Italy. But I don’t have this substantiated; I haven’t consulted it with a traffic specialist, and I don’t know the general context so well.
The second criticism: I would close off that block on the left at the bottom; I wouldn't allow public space to pass through it; the whole concept unnecessarily confuses it. It probably required knowing the context worse; David probably liked something there.
One reminder: public space today is accompanied by information, if you will, advertising. In the case of the library, which is not a dead space, I would expect a solution for announcing events. When the architect forgets this in the design, their building constantly struggles and resists. I honestly hate the nonsense about interactive facades that inform me of my temperature, but some architecturally designed consideration was appropriate here.
When something succeeds, it is hard to talk about it. Now I must fulfill protocol: Article 14 "graduate thesis" paragraph 4. Letter a) meets the goals b) without reservation c) I state to award the title d) I recommend e) excellent f) with a star.