Plzeň will not return the house with interiors by Loose for now, wants to postpone the deadline

Plzeň - Plzeň will not yet give up the house at Klatovská street 19, which features valuable interiors by Adolf Loos. However, it must negotiate new conditions with the Ministry of Defense, which transferred the house worth 4.6 million CZK to the city free of charge in 2005 on the condition of its renovation and use. According to the original agreement, Plzeň was supposed to complete everything by 2015, but now it would like to postpone the deadline to 2020. This was stated by the mayor's deputy, Miloslav Šimák (ČSSD).
    "We will negotiate, it is about extending the deadline," he noted. Another change, apart from the deadline, that the city needs to discuss with the state concerns the operator of the building. The original contract listed the intended operator as the American Center Plzeň, the so-called American center, which no longer exists.
    Last year, the city hall decided to return the property, which used to house the military administration, to the state because it lacks tens of millions for its renovation and has no use for it. The plan to create a Museum of General Patton, an exhibition on displaced Jewish families, and an exhibition on the wartime history of Plzeň has gradually fallen through. However, after a meeting of the city council last December, the proposal to return it was withdrawn, especially at the insistence of the opposition and preservationists. They point out that the interior is directly linked to Adolf Loos.
    The key feature in the building is the interior of the apartment of Hugo Semler on the first floor. Loos implemented its modifications during the second phase of his work in Plzeň in the early 1930s. Loos is also responsible for the design of the music room, which is a central space of what is now a fragment of the preserved interior. According to experts, the interior of the music room is likely the last of Loos’s realizations in Plzeň, but of such significance that it ranks among the most important set of his works in all of Europe.