Exterior exhibition: The story of panel houses in the Prague region

From September 21, 2017, to January 1, 2018, an outdoor exhibition The Story of the Prefab Building is being presented in Prague, which introduces the history and present of selected Prague housing estates (Solidarity, Invalidovna, Ďáblice, South City, Southwest City, New Barrandov). This exhibition, freely accessible to the general public in front of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague's Dejvice, is the fourteenth and final exhibition of the traveling cycle dedicated to selected (not only) panel housing estates in individual regions of the Czech Republic.

“We would like to show that not all housing estates are the same, that they do not necessarily have to be monotonous clusters of boxes designed by an anonymous team in a design institute,” explains the main author of the project, Lucie Skřivánková (Zadražilová) from the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague. “Panel housing estates have their past, present, and in many cases, also developmental potential, and for their residents, they represent a home. Therefore, it would be a mistake to close our eyes to the individuality of many of them and to be influenced by one-sided judgments,” she adds.

According to the latest census, there are nearly 10,000 panel buildings in Prague, in which 44% (almost 556,000) of the city's residents live.

The outdoor exhibition introduces six housing estates representing different periods of the new periodization of this type of building, developed by the researchers of the research task “Panel Housing Estates as Part of the Urban Environment: Evaluation and Presentation of their Residential Potential.” The first post-war housing estate in Prague, Solidarity, built using brick technology with the use of some prefabricated elements and characterized by unusually rich civic amenities for its time, represents the primary phase. The experimental Invalidovna represents the pioneering stage of residential construction connected with the introduction of panel technology and the search for new paths in construction. An example of a beautiful housing estate is Ďáblice with generously established urban planning and significant architectural qualities. A typical representative of the technocratic phase is the realization of South City from 1971 to 1988, whose main architects, Jan Krásný and Jiří Lasovský, had to abandon the project for political reasons, and the original well-thought-out design of a “new, independently functioning city” dissolved into monotonous grayness. Residential construction was characterized by quantity and frugality. The last period, the so-called phase of late beautiful and postmodern housing estates, is represented by two complexes – Southwest City and New Barrandov. Despite technocratic pressure, their architects managed to create high-quality housing estates in terms of architecture and urbanism and to use some postmodern elements. All six presented complexes, along with another 44 housing estates from across the country, are also included in the book Paneláci 1, which is a catalog of the exhibition cycle The Story of the Prefab Building.
The realization of these housing estates often involved very capable architects who creatively developed the ideas of the interwar avant-garde architects and urban planners. The exhibition also addresses questions of urbanism, apartment layouts, artistic decorations of the estates, and building technologies. It does not overlook the question of what the age, educational, and professional structure of the local residents is and how it has changed since the construction period. “Through examples, we show what is happening today with selected panel housing estates, whether regeneration interventions have contributed to improving the living environment or, on the contrary, disrupted the genius loci of these complexes,” adds Lucie Skřivánková.

The grant task Panel Housing Estates in the Czech Republic as Part of the Urban Environment: Evaluation and Presentation of their Residential Potential is a five-year research and exhibition project (2013–2017) involving nearly two dozen architectural historians, urban planners, preservationists, demographers, and other experts from museum and academic institutions. The expert guarantor is art and architecture historian Professor Rostislav Švácha, and the project is institutionally supported by the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague. The Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic supports the project as part of the grant program for research and development of national cultural identity (NAKI).

In addition to two Czech and one English publications on the phenomenon of housing estate construction in the Czech lands and specific scientific texts, the results of the research are presented in a series of fourteen exhibitions in individual regional cities, culminating at the end of this year in a comprehensive exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague. The exhibition cycle is intended for both expert and lay audiences. The exhibition, designed by the architectural studio A1 Architects (Tereza Schneiderová, Lenka Křemenová, David Maštálka), takes the form of a stylized panel town. Six free-standing elements made of lightweight concrete were produced for the project by the company LIAS Vintířov. The graphic design is by Štěpán Malovec.

Panel housing estates represent an important urban, architectural, and historical phenomenon. Although they were the most typical and widespread form of mass residential construction from the 1950s to the 1980s and today almost three million residents of the Czech Republic live in housing estates, research into their significance and socio-cultural role is still in its early stages. After years of one-sided criticism and rejection, we are now witnessing a growing interest in the topic of panel housing estates not only among experts but also among contemporary artists.

Term: September 21, 2017 – January 1, 2018, grand opening: October 12, 2017, from 2 PM
Address: Thákurova 7, Prague 6-Dejvice

More information >