New proposals have emerged for the Liberec Tesco to become a monument

Liberec - New proposals have reached the Ministry of Culture for the Liberec Tesco department store to become a cultural monument. If the ministry agrees, it would prevent the construction of a large shopping and entertainment center called Forum in the lower city center. The project for the new complex involves the demolition of the 32-year-old department store. It was originally named Ještěd, and the latest proposal for its declaration as a cultural monument was sent to the ministry on Monday by Jiří Křížek.
    The Ministry of Culture rejected the proposal for listing the building as a cultural monument back in 2005. "Tesco does not have enough heritage value, especially compared to other buildings. Additionally, the original form of the building has already changed," explained Petra Ulbrichová, the head of the monument protection department at the Ministry of Culture, at that time.
    In today's statement to ČTK, Ulbrichová noted that the building from the mid-1970s brings elements of an unfriendly peripheral environment to the center of Liberec, such as thousands of square meters of so-called dead facades, passages, and corridors without shop windows, as well as desolate terraces. "The construction of the Ještěd department store drastically impacted the natural structure of Liberec and insensitively marked the historical center of the city. Despite certain architectural value, the building lacks the level required for its declaration as a cultural monument," stated Ulbrichová.
    Křížek works at the National Heritage Institute in Liberec, but he contacted the ministry as a private individual. "The experimental building of the Liberec Tesco department store is a unique example of structuralist architecture in the Czech context," Křížek told ČTK. The current Tesco is set to begin demolition next year. The project for the Forum was brought by the Dutch company AM Development. In the expansive area between the public transport terminal, the House of Culture, and Soukenné náměstí, they plan to create a complex featuring a new Tesco hypermarket, a shopping passage, a multiplex cinema, offices, and restaurants.
    According to Křížek, the ministry declared the former Máj department store in Prague as a cultural monument last October. The projects for the Máj and Ještěd department stores were created by the SIAL studio. Křížek is convinced that Ještěd/Tesco is equally valuable as the former Máj and deserves to be listed among cultural monuments. "Ještěd/Tesco has become a unique testament to the level of architectural creation in Czechoslovakia at the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s. It is an extraordinary example of how continuity between Czech architecture and architecture in Western Europe was maintained even after the political and cultural isolation of the republic," Křížek pointed out.
    The Liberec Region, the Liberec City Hall, and the building owner, Tesco Stores, disagreed with the inclusion of the department store on the monument list. According to Křížek, the ministry sided with the owner of the department store without being able to convincingly explain why it did not comply with opposing views from its expert committee, the Heritage Council of the National Heritage Institute, and the authors of the proposal for including Ještěd/Tesco among monuments, professors Jiří Suchomel and Rostislav Švácha.
    Křížek noted that Švácha recently submitted the proposal for listing Tesco/Ještěd as a monument again to the ministry. The third proposal was sent by architect Patrik Líbal from the Technical University. "We received the first new initiative to start the proceedings for declaring the former Ještěd department store as a monument on February 7, and it cannot yet be said when we will decide on it," summarized Ulbrichová.