VŠUP wants to relocate the workshops to the new building on Mikulandská Street

Prague - The AAAD (Academy of Art, Architecture and Design) aims to move its artistic workshops to its second building on Mikulandská Street in the center of Prague. The acquired building, a former school, is planned to be reconstructed, and construction could start this November. The school currently operates in a building opposite the Rudolfinum on Palach Square; the current spatial conditions are, according to rector Jindřich Smetana, inadequate. He stated this in an interview with ČTK. However, experts do not agree on the assessment of the plan to renovate the building on Mikulandská.

The project received a zoning decision this February. "I would like to complete the project for building permission by the end of May and we will announce a tender for the contractor," said Smetana. The actual construction is expected to last one to 14 months. Smetana did not want to disclose the amount the school has prepared for the reconstruction, as it will only emerge from the tender for the contractor. "Architecture does not have to be expensive," he only mentioned.

The four-story building with an inner courtyard should have two underground floors added. The five-story courtyard extension and western wing are to be raised by one floor. Historical cellars will be preserved in the basement wing facing Mikulandská Street.

Since the 1990s, the school has been striving to acquire another building, and there was even consideration of a campus outside Prague. "We do not want new objects; we want to adapt the vacated ones," said Smetana. After the reconstruction, the building will house workshops and studios of the AAAD. The facility is also expected to include a new lecture hall.

"We live in a huge makeshift situation because in the 1990s, we lost all our workshops as part of restitution. We moved everything to the basement in a caricature of workshops," the rector stated.

The Ministry of Culture is currently evaluating whether the building on Mikulandská will be declared a cultural monument, as requested by the Prague office of the National Heritage Institute in November. Last year, the project was examined by a panel of experts on heritage care from the Prague City Hall. "The project towards Mikulandská Street proposes a controversial cut into the facade to the full height of the building. This would also eliminate one of the portals. Such an action would disrupt the symmetry and integrity of the neo-Renaissance facade," the panel writes in the minutes of the meeting.

On the contrary, one of the panel members, architectural historian and university lecturer Vladimír Šlapeta, expressed support for the project. According to him, "the architect is inserting a new energetic layer into this historical environment, an adequate functional transformation, which is also expressed architecturally," is written in the minutes of the meeting. The proposal was also supported by architect Josef Pleskot and art historian Jiří T. Kotalík, among others.

The neo-Renaissance building currently houses the J. A. Comenius Pedagogical Library, which was previously a primary school. In 1833, a part was built as a German state real school, and the other two wings were constructed in the 1890s.