Director of the NK: The cost of construction will still change

Prague - The National Library has adjusted the timeline for when the new building of the National Library in Prague at Letná should be opened to its first visitors by several months. It is accounting for a buffer and the necessary time to move many books. "The shell construction should be finished by the end of 2010, and we would like to open in the summer or fall of the following year," said Vlastimil Ježek, director of the National Library, to ČTK today. The cost of the construction may also change; according to calculations from 2004, it was supposed to be two billion crowns.
    "The winning project still needs to be accurately assessed. The calculations from 2004 were based on a certain number of cubic meters; we didn’t know what shape it would take," Ježek noted. It is therefore unclear whether the amount will increase or decrease. A large part of the construction is located underground. The studio Future Systems, which received a reward of 160,000 euros (approximately 4.5 million crowns) for first place in the competition, also got the opportunity to prepare the project documentation.
    The originally announced two billion currently has a promised source in the abolished National Property Fund and its associated government program for the care of the so-called national cultural treasure. Last summer, the government decided that over ten billion crowns would flow into five national cultural institutions between 2006 and 2014, which should also include funds for the National Library and the reconstruction of the National Museum.
    The program is to be supported by revenues from the abolished fund and the state budget. This year, 593 million crowns from the fund are going into it through the MK budget, and the state is not contributing yet. Next year, it should be 643 million from the fund and already 134 million crowns from the state budget. However, in 2009, the contribution from the abolished fund is only 346 million, and from the state, it is 976 million crowns; this trend continues, with contributions from the fund ending in 2011 at 106 million and from the state in 2014 at 1.2 billion crowns.
    "Because Jan Kaplický does not live in the Czech Republic, he must collaborate with a Czech architectural firm to prepare the project documentation," Ježek stated. According to him, this preparation phase will take four to six weeks. Project preparation serves as a basis for zoning decisions, which should take two to three months. The building permit will be issued based on the project documentation, and a tender will be announced for the general contractor of the construction.
    The building permit is reviewed, among others, by the municipal heritage department - in the jury for the selection of the project, the director of this department, Jan Kněžínek, sat instead of the mayor and voted for Kaplický. Municipal heritage officers sometimes request an opinion from the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ); however, according to the heritage law, it is not binding for them. In Prague, the two perspectives often differ considerably.
    Ježek believes that a pit for the library, or rather its substantial part, a storage space for ten million books, could begin to be dug at the end of 2008 after obtaining the building permit. Kaplický placed it underground, thereby easing the volume of the above-ground parts of the building.
    Ježek is very pleased with the positive responses the project's design has evoked among city representatives and the Ministry of Culture.
    Prague’s mayor Pavel Bém described the proposal as bold, surprising, original, energy-saving, and certainly controversial. "Now the conservative heritage protectors will come into play, and a lively performance about the future of modern architecture in Prague will begin," he told ČTK.
    The director of the NPÚ will only return from abroad on Tuesday. Josef Štulc, president of the Czech section of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, stated in the press that Kaplický's buildings do not fit into the domestic cultural tradition.