At the press conference on September 14, 2018, you, together with your realization team, presented a completely new design for the Janáček Cultural Center in Brno.

We would like to explain to you why, as the Authors of the JKC project, we disagree with this solution and with your approach, and why we intend to defend ourselves against the actions of your team in court.

Following our winning competition proposal from 2004, we engaged in intense work for 14 years, even during times when the JKC project was not favored by political leaders. During this period, four mayors from various political parties have passed through Brno, including yourself. Under the conditions of the city’s heritage conservation area, on the edge of the medieval core of the city, in the context of the institutions’ buildings, hotels, and ordinary apartment buildings, we managed to obtain a zoning decision for the entire JKC building after 5 years (2008-2013) for Phase 1 of the underground section and courtyard, Phase 2 - the above-ground section, and for the establishment of public space - a new square. From 2013 to 2015, we obtained a building permit for the construction of Phase 1, namely the underground public parking garage with a courtyard, greenery, and a pavilion in the backyard, and a public space in the forecourt. We developed this project into detail in the construction documentation and in the realization documentation. From 2015 to 2018, we conducted copyright supervision on the construction of Phase 1, in difficult conditions of an archaeological site and in extremely challenging foundational conditions while implementing a three-story underground structure with original artistic forms of reinforced concrete mushroom ceilings. Throughout the project, we engaged in numerous challenging negotiations with the owners of surrounding buildings, politicians, and authorities. Thanks primarily to our ability to argue the fact that the proposal was selected in an open and transparent architectural competition, which is a condition of the regulatory plan for the MPR, we were able to reach agreements, the building has a valid zoning decision, and is already partially constructed.

You have now presented a completely new proposal. Your Designer was supposed to primarily address the acoustics and internal layout of the concert hall according to our licensing agreements. Our studio continues to oversee and guide the construction process as the Authors.

Instead of focusing on the internal arrangement of the hall, your Designer introduced, with your consent, a completely different architectural and urban solution that does not relate in any way to our competition proposal or further documentation, and arbitrarily, without any competition, cancels everything that has already been executed.

The new proposal by the Designer represents an "inflated" building, 5 meters wider and 4 meters higher than what is in the valid zoning decision, located on lands that do not belong to the city, insensitively disrupting the corner of the Besední House with a bridge, instead of five floors in Besední and Veselé Streets, there are six floors in the facade, and it destructively interferes with the already constructed building of Phase 1. Above all, we cannot agree that the Designer wants to place a half-glass building in the historic center of the city, reminiscent of 1990s architecture, in contradiction to the context of the location. Our proposal selected in the architectural competition is composed of a balanced composition of an abstract timeless mass of the hall and the newly created square. In a checkerboard arrangement, full and empty components of the city alternate: the buildings of the JKC, the Pražák Palace, the Besední House, and the International Hotel are interspersed with the empty spaces of the newly proposed square and the courtyard of the Besední House.

Our proposal is enclosed, almost mysterious, concentrated, calm, and does not disturb its surroundings. The internal functions of the concert hall do not attack the residential and quiet public space. Our JKC building is designed symmetrically as a contemporary abstract complement to the palaces on Husova Street (the buildings of Teophil von Hansen - Besední Dům, Pražákův palác, UMPRUM Museum). The building is as important as the square; the square is as important as the building. The side five-story facades connect through a composition of slender perforated windows with the surrounding apartment buildings, without attacking them. Two prisms - the white prism of the hall and the smaller travertine prism of the roof extension calmly and balancedly relate their volumes to the surrounding palaces and in their materiality connect to the Brno tradition of interwar architecture in a modern and timeless way. The internal design of the concert hall was consulted with world acoustics experts (Artec, SSD), who confirmed that a hall with top acoustic parameters can be realized at this size. This is evidenced by the fact that, for example, the legendary hall of Musikverein Wien fits into the volume of the hall in our proposal, with a significantly higher capacity. (It is therefore not true that it is necessary to enlarge the building due to acoustic needs. This was also informally confirmed by the acoustician of the Designer).

The new proposal by the Designer is excessive, the building overshadows the public space, the architecture is full of gestures and unfounded ideas. Six floors of lobbies, glowing behind the fully-glassed facade into Veselé Street, will attack the windows of apartments in the apartment buildings on Veselé Street, located 15 meters away. The excessive building requires the purchase of additional land, and its mass exceeds the capacity limits of the parcel, which are already exhausted to the maximum in our slimmer solution.

In the tender for the Designer of the concert hall, your realization team "selected" a specialist in concert hall design for nearly three years (2016-2018). In the media, you claim to have selected from multiple offers in an international competition. We cannot agree with this claim. The requirements of your team were set so high in advance that only one offer remained in the tender, and "surprisingly," it was the offer from the Konior team, whose reference building in Poland was repeatedly visited by representatives and the preparatory team during the tender organized by the City and the Philharmonic. Choosing from one offer is not a selection. Above all, it must be emphasized that you were not seeking an architectural design or solution, but only a price offer and a team, and thus you provided a sort of blank check for what will be presented to you. There is also intentionally misleading information that the designer was selected in an international competition from several studios, creating a false impression among the uninformed public that this was an architectural competition. You certainly know that this was merely a public contract for the preparation of project documentation, the only criterion for which was the offered price after meeting the qualification requirements.

We believe that the public is not sufficiently informed that this single offer for the project work of Phase 2, which was supposed to follow our documentation for the zoning decision, was "selected" at the price of 129,000,000 CZK + VAT, instead of the anticipated work value of 65,000,000 CZK.

In light of the above facts, we would like to ask you:

1. Why did you not reissue the tender for the Designer with a single, double-priced offer, with more open criteria? Who will pay the difference of 64 million CZK compared to the anticipated value of the public contract? The taxpayers or your team? Why do you claim that you were selecting from multiple offers when you received only one valid price offer?

2. Who on your team is responsible for the fact that instead of completing the internal aspects of the concert hall and its acoustics, you are presenting a completely new architectural and urban concept for the building and the square?

3. Who is responsible for the fact that the new solution of the Designer does not fit within the parameters of Zoning Decision No. 222 dated April 30, 2013?

4. Who is responsible for the fact that the project, which should now have been further developed in detail in the documentation for the building permit, is in the stage of study, outside the City’s lots, in violation of the Regulatory Plan of the MPR (unfulfilled obligation of the architectural competition) and in violation of the valid zoning decision? Why did the project management of the contract, together with the director of the Philharmonic and the deputy mayor, travel around Europe for three years on the City’s expenses to gain inspiration, instead of focusing on the practical realizability of the building?

5. Who is responsible for the fact that instead of the permitted capacity of the hall for 900 seats, a hall capable of 40% more seating for 1,300 is being designed, and that the building is full of superfluous facilities, such as four apartments, storage for musical instruments, a music archive, and additional rooms for Philharmonic musicians who already have facilities in the Besední House, even though it must have been obvious that these new requirements from the Brno Philharmonic would necessitate the enlargement of the building? Who is responsible for the expansion of the volume of the building in the underground section?

6. Who will pay the increased costs of the expanding building when Phase 2 of the JKC was already supposed to cost 1.3 billion CZK before the Designer's activities started, and today the Designer is presenting a study with a total construction volume 48% larger? The difference would then amount to approximately 500-600 million CZK - who will pay it? The taxpayers?

7. Who gave permission to your Designer to propose destructive and debasing interventions in the already realized building of Phase 1, designed as a unique work of authorship? (Our licensing agreement allows the Designer to complement objects of Phase 2, not to destroy, change, and demolish Phase 1).

Dear Mr. Mayor, with all due respect, we ask you to ensure, in accordance with our contractual agreements on copyright, that the realization team respects our rights to the continuity of our proposal, even when it is technically and acoustically adapted by another Designer. The Designer should propose and newly resolve the hall and its acoustics without changing the external appearance of the building, its dimensions, and the urban and architectural solution, and without interfering with the already completed Phase 1. Please ensure the return of the JKC project back into realizable paths in accordance with the valid zoning decision, so that we can all see the completion of the building by the end of 2020, as you planned, and not face further decades of delays and wasted work.

Respectfully, the Authors of the JKC building:

Jan Hájek, Jakub Havlas, Pavel Joba

(Atelier M1 architekti s.r.o.)