It's been exactly a year since Jan Kaplický's design won the competition for Prague's new National Library building on Letná hill. Within those 12 months, Czech lawmakers have managed to elect a new president, Canada and the United States have agreed to lift Czechs' visa requirements, and talks on stationing an anti-missile radar on Czech soil have entered their final stage. But the fate of the library project, which has generated months of public debate and dozens of front-page newspaper articles, remains undecided. Prague Daily Monitor | ČeskéNoviny | previously
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Having participated in the competition, and now reading about the Future Systems scheme's rule breaking (book storage below grade) I am more bothered than ever that this 'thing' won.
I'll hand it to Jan though, I can't imagine too many of my ex's going to bat quite like Eva did.
how many people don't break the rules on a competition in one way or another?
one step further - how many winning competition entries broke or significantly reinterpret the brief? maya lin's winning design for the vietnam war memorial comes to mind...
exactly AP
knowing that comment would cause some reaction;
the 'rule' broken was the one illustrating the desire for the National Archive, ie first copies of every book written in Czech, not to be below grade and thus susceptible to flooding, etc...
There's rules and rules... This one seems like one that should have been kept. Says a lot of Future Systems and of the jury.
Of course, on the other hand - a competition proposal is a suggestion, the program will change anyway, and the location of functions is in flux until the building is in use. so, no harm done - yet.
And the building is one of the most apalling pieces of anything that's popped up so far in these 3rd world country high profile competitions.
Funny I didn't know Jan was diddling Eva Jiřičná, interesting what you find out. Does anyone know if they did any "work" together
i'm no doom-and-gloomer so i won't say, "if this thing gets built, it's a signal of the end of architects EVER being taken seriously again. this project is a disaster for architects worldwide."
but it did occur to me.
I've never been to prague and am not familiar with the context, but I do find the imagery of this a bit disturbing. It could maybe work as an art museum or music venue but that it's off the mark as a library.
this is one of the instances in which i agree with kunstler's description as posted in this December 2007 "Eyesore of the Month"
seriously, it looks like pete's dragon got skinned and used as tent material
Jesus, that is one ugly piece of shit. No wonder they're taking their time on it.
"Funny I didn't know Jan was diddling Eva Jiřičná...Does anyone know if they did any "work" together"
well the caption did say...
"Kaplický says he will pull out..."
...so i guess they haven't done any work yet...
I just think it's so fun!
you know, this has grown on me. i kind of like it, and hope that if it does get built, it will look like the renderings.
Whether you like the building or not, this is an example to us all that rules are made to be broken. Good architects challenge their clients. In a competition this means breaking a rule if you really believe in why you need to do it. If the client agrees, you win. If the client doesn't, you're no worse off and you've pushed yourself instead of cow-towing to a rule that might have been set up by people who don't know as much as you do about what's possible.
I mean flooding? ....on the top of a hill? How hard will that be to design against? Not really all that visionary a requirement is it, I certainly wouldn't have compromised my design because of it.
ps - FS is kept small precisely because they rarely compromise. They pay the price for their commitment every single day. So Helsinki, what does that say about FS as a practice?
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