Brno – The conservation zones that Brno, together with the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ), is striving to establish, should protect the exterior appearance of facades and building fronts that lost their heritage status due to an administrative error. They should also prevent arbitrary destruction or demolition. This was stated to ČTK by the director of the NPÚ Brno branch, Zdeněk Vácha, and the Brno councilor for urban planning, Filip Chvátal (KDU-ČSL).
Due to the late registration on the heritage list in 1988 and 1989, hundreds of buildings, not only in southern Moravia, lost their heritage status. In Brno alone, there are 1,405 such buildings. Some of them have already been demolished by their owners after realizing that the building lacks heritage protection. "We don’t have exact statistics because if a building is not a monument, the owner is not obliged to communicate with us. However, we know of three demolished buildings; in two cases, they were buildings from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and in one case a modern building from the 20th century,” stated the director of the NPÚ in Brno, Zdeněk Vácha.
One way to protect buildings is to declare them as monuments again. Anyone can submit a proposal, including the NPÚ branch. Despite the fact that since 2016, when the administrative error was discovered, around forty proposals for declaring buildings or their parts as monuments have been submitted, the Ministry of Culture has initiated proceedings in nine cases, and in six cases, the buildings have been declared monuments. These include the old hospital in Tišnov, the Květnice hotel in Tišnov, a set of building facades in Brno on Milady Horákové Street and 28. října Square, St. Martin's Church in Zbýšov, a neo-Renaissance school in Brno on Šujanovo Square, and the Franke villa in Tišnov.
Brno has been organizing meetings with heritage conservationists, architects, and representatives of city districts for two years. A proposal for the declaration of two conservation zones has emerged in the working group, which would protect the external appearance of buildings to maintain the character of streets and urban neighborhoods.
"If the conservation zone were approved in the proposed form, in most cases, heritage conservationists would then comment on facades, the preservation of the character of the buildings, or the adjustment of public spaces. They would only address interior spaces in the case of cultural monuments. The idea that people would not be able to remodel the interiors of their homes is, therefore, completely misguided,” stated councilor Chvátal.
The National Heritage Institute proposed two zones covering a total area of ten square kilometers that would protect the buildings. These would include most of the buildings that lost protection due to late registration on the list. One zone would be located to the west, north, and east of the heritage reserve in the center of Brno, while the other would be in the district of Královo Pole.
However, representatives of the city districts opposed this, wanting to reduce the size of the zones. "The report from the working group meeting and the statements from the city districts are already available to the Ministry of Culture. The city's stance is not yet finalized; we are still negotiating that, but it should be ready within two weeks,” added Chvátal.
The entire problem arose between 1987 and 1989. Cultural monuments had to be entered on the list by the end of 1987, but many proposals submitted in the last months of 1987 were only entered on the list in 1988 and 1989. The problem was discovered in 2016.
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