The building authority will decide on the demolition of Transgas no earlier than a week from now

illustration: Jan Šrámek

Prague - The Building Authority of Prague 2 will decide on the demolition of the group of buildings Transgas on Vinohradská Street in Prague within a week at the earliest. Today, Martina Klapalová from the local city hall informed ČTK. The owner of the complex, HB Reavis, intends to build several new buildings on the site. The plan to remove the structures, which the state refused to protect as a monument, has drawn criticism from some experts.

"The Building Authority will prepare and issue a decision on the permit for the removal of the building, and this decision will again be posted for the public for a period of 15 days," Klapalová stated. The owner of the buildings applied for demolition at the end of July. The notice of the initiation of proceedings leading to the permit for demolition states that both tower-like structures, the dispatch building, shops, as well as the former fountain and underground collectors of the area should be removed.

If HB Reavis obtains permission, it will not begin demolition immediately. Timelines will be specified only after all permits are obtained. HB Reavis plans to build a multifunctional building on the released site according to the design of the architectural studio Jakub Cigler Architekti. According to an earlier statement from the developer, it could be completed by the beginning of 2021.

The group of buildings of the former Central Gas Dispatching Transgas and the Ministry of Fuel and Energy is located just above Wenceslas Square and below the building of Czech Radio. It is the work of the team Jindřich Malátek, Ivo Loos, Zdeněk Eisenreich, and Václav Aulický. The plan to demolish the group of buildings has sparked debates about the architecture from the socialist era, which has its supporters as well as critics.

The Club for Old Prague attempted to protect the group of buildings from demolition by proposing to the Ministry of Culture that they be declared a monument. This is now a commonly used route to prevent a building from being demolished. The Prague branch of the National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) did not recommend the declaration and stated that "the area does not create an urban environment and materially and in scale harms the environment of the urban heritage zone." The General Directorate of NPÚ supported the declaration of the group of buildings as a monument and communicated this to the Minister of Culture. However, the ministry did not declare the buildings as monuments.

The then Minister of Culture Daniel Herman (KDU-ČSL) initiated a review of this decision last May, which he stopped a few months later. His decision stated, among other things, that the properties are inappropriately integrated into the surroundings, "the details of the buildings, facades, and railings are out of human scale," that "no significant cultural-historical event took place" in the area, or that the buildings are not, unlike the Ingstavu or Kotva building, a significant example of brutalism.

Supporters of the building evaluate it as an outstanding example of stylistically synthetic architecture of the 70s, combining elements of brutalism, technicalism, and postmodernism, but also as a unique realization of postmodern urbanism in Czech territory. "On the site of today’s three oversized Transgas buildings, seven houses will be created that will adapt to the surrounding scale of Vinohrady," HB Reavis stated earlier.