Veletržní Palace

ACCOMPANYING REPORT
for the sketches of the general solution for the construction of exhibition buildings P. V. V. on the plots of the factory objects Melichar-Umrath in Prague VII.

For the future construction of the P. V. V. buildings, I have expanded the given program and outlined the possibility of generous construction of exhibition buildings on plots that are not yet owned by P. V. V., in order to highlight the advantages of this solution.
For economic reasons, the most important issue for P. V. V. is inexpensive transportation. Therefore, I focused on it and proposed a special station for P. V. V. near the future P. V. V. buildings by the Buštěhrad railway line, which is intended to facilitate rapid and inexpensive transportation of exhibition items to the exhibition buildings.
Since the designer was given some freedom in adjusting blocks C and D, I based my proposal on the idea of a freight station and made a regulatory adjustment to the area of the previous blocks C and D.
This adjustment, in the proposal for ideal construction, occupies part of the area of the abolished cemetery; however, it increases the garden area in these places. This adjustment also allows for the creation of rectangular blocks, which are more advantageous for solving the construction of exhibition buildings, as noted above with regard to the inexpensive transportation of exhibited items to exhibition displays and warehouses. Therefore, I proposed a smaller freight station, where two freight elevators
can transport wagons to the level II of the basement, and they can then be distributed along the tracks laid in the main underground communications. For local transportation of exhibition items, there are freight elevators in buildings A and B, situated on Bělského street and Veverková street. These streets have a slight incline and are therefore suitable only for local transport. These elevators allow connection between the exhibition displays and all floors as well as with the large exhibition hall, where items are transported to all areas of the hall spaces by simply moving to the overhead crane.
At building C, where the arrangement of the residential floor is decisive, smaller freight elevators are located in accordance with the placement of the staircases, which operate in the shaft of the passenger elevators. For the arrangement of buildings A and B, the following were decisive:

1. Creation of as large exhibition spaces as possible,
2. Creation of continuous communications,
3. Creation of large exhibition halls,
4. Acquisition of as many stores as possible.

The layout is evident from the floor plan. The continuity of communications is interrupted only in the raised ground floor at the main entrance from Bělského street, where a high space has been left for the transportation of tall items to the main halls. To achieve a greater number of stores, store passages have been created, from which the stores are accessible, since no other arrangement was possible due to the incline of the terrain on Rudolf street and Heřman street. The rising terrain is also utilized for the main entrance from Veverková street, from which one enters directly into the raised ground floor of the exhibition buildings A and B.
The program of building A has been supplemented by increasing the cinema to 800 seats, establishing a central restaurant, and connecting the proposed café via elevators to buffets on all floors and in the second basement, providing a large warehouse for boxes. At building B, large public baths were created beyond the program. For the hotel building, the program has been expanded to include a public restaurant and a small hall. Everything else is evident from the floor plans and sections.
The construction of all buildings is reinforced concrete of the mushroom system; the connection of the supports with the slab has no visible heads. The construction above the central tract is evident from the section of the building. It has been roughly statically solved just like other constructions used in the project.
Alternative solutions.
I also enclose alternative solutions made for lack of time only for the ground floor, III. floor, in the facades and perspective. Store halls alternate in the ground floor with exhibition halls, illuminated besides the skylight also directly. The higher floors have continuous communication. I envisioned the basement resolved according to the method used for building A. The arrangement of offices for P. V. V., the bank, the restaurant, the café, and the cinema is easily feasible due to the dislocation of the staircases.

Oldřich Tyl. In Prague, August 31, 1924.

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TO THE COMPETITION FOR EXHIBITION BUILDINGS
ALOIS ŠPALEK

The regulatory condition of the competition to maintain the alignment of the street at Studánka already represented a significant disadvantage for competitors in developing such a concept as predestined by the program itself. Furthermore, there was no reason for this condition, after all, there is nothing more than an old cemetery in the way, which has no significance, either artistic or historical. For solving the task, as it turned out, this condition was fatally dangerous. It imposed a character of uncertainty and confusion on the works of those who could not emancipate themselves from it, and directly undermined their ability to achieve a generous solution. The front two blocks were administratively mastered more or less satisfactorily, whereas the rear block, squeezed into the triangular plot, ended up in some places almost bizarrely (see the radial solution, Kotek or Vaněček). Architect Dryák relatively most successfully mastered this block with an arched transition. Of all the projects, only one (Tyl) has enough strength that by abolishing the forced obliqueness of the street at Studánka achieves better regulation and regular, straight blocks capable of broader processing. The exhibition bazaar is a prototype of a temporal problem, into which all the ingenuity of modern technology can be embedded. The disposition influenced by it asserts itself, grows by itself, bypassing all trivialities, shedding superfluous decoration, historicism, and romanticism, embodying the true engineering spirit that draws only from needs, purposefulness, practicality, economy, hygiene, and the achievements of technical and economic advancements, that spirit from which a new architecture is born. A project that is to win and - moreover - also to be realized must arise from these eminent needs that determine its direction; the architect, the creator, must scientifically comprehend his task as a scholar tracking the development of modern life, so multifaceted from all perspectives; he must not be interested only in architecture (tectonics and plasticity), but in life.
There is a lot of provincial, old-European, little life, and much schooling in some dispositions. For example, how much trouble the small difficulty, namely the indentation of the fronts of the front blocks near Rudolf street, which gives the left block the shape of an irregular trapezoid, caused to some competitors (see Roith’s project, where the transverse wings are perpendicular to Bělského street, and the rear tract generally intersects at an angle and thus protrudes the entire system of regular triangles at this front). This irregularity could easily be overcome by curving or indenting the transverse tracts so that they intersect perpendicularly with the longitudinal ones (Tyl).
The disposition of blocks for a modern architect is a given task defined: clarity, simplicity, good dimensions; the constructive system is the basis, determining the rhythm of the building, a rhythm that repeats, monumentalizing (Tyl). There is no room for idyllic corners, picturesque groupings, impressive prospects, but the demands are: space, clarity, orientation, speed, order, systematicity, safety, air, light, cleanliness; these are the purposeful elements that create a desirable good disposition. It is surprising that the project immediately following the best reaches for the worthless decoration of an 80 m high advertising tower, which does not compare at all with the now so important notion of economy. It was absolutely false to perceive the construction as an advertising object drawing from a certain analogy of the necessity of advertising for the merchandise on display. This effort has precisely led to excesses that undermine the effectiveness of the entire building entity, which in itself, with good constructive architecture, is the most effective advertisement.
Communications, the transportation of large and small goods, the operation itself, and frequency are the basic components of an efficient solution. The bizarreness and complexity of the floor plan, a labyrinth of corridors, rooms, and courtyards hinder communication and operation, whilst taking away light and air. Only floor plans that have a great line determined by the constructive system, spaciousness, clarity, and regularity can stand firm because they create consistency, order, easy orientation, guarantee safety, a healthy stay, comfort, and the financial success of commerce (Tyl). The transportation of goods directly from the tracks of the Buštěhrad railway into the basement by way of a freight lift and elevators is an essential condition very well understood only by a few competitors (Tyl, Dryák). It also required ingenuity to solve the terrain rise towards the west without detriment to the homogeneity of the disposition and frequency (Tyl).
The exhibition bazaar is a factory, a reservoir of light and air, a space governed by order, system, organization of movement, arrangement, composition of goods, frequency, operation, refreshment, strengthening, and recovery. These inevitable components of the whole, cafés, restaurants, cinemas, bars, are by-products of the total entity, whose placement in a good floor plan concept will arise self-evidently, without disrupting the very organism of the building and its own purpose (Tyl).
We welcome with great appreciation that architects of our generation have been presented with the first task that is different from the usual ones, in whose solution representatives of our direction succeeded in documenting the legitimacy of our theses and their viability! It can only be repeated that timely felt and created constructive architecture must be the result of the ingenuity and technique of today's time and must thus precisely and eminently meet the demands of today's complex life. Modern architecture is not just an artistic problem, but also a technical, economic, social, and cultural one at the same time.