Architect: We are only renovating Vilu na Hřebenkách, it is not valuable

Prague – The villa at the Smíchov foot of Petřín is not facing demolition, but rather a reconstruction and expansion for family housing. Its owner is developer Martin Kulík. This was stated today to journalists by the project co-author, architect Petr Kolář from the ADR studio. He added that currently a larger part of the work is suspended until Wednesday, when a meeting with representatives of the Prague 5 city hall will take place. Local residents are protesting against the reconstruction, and several well-known personalities have published an open letter today due to the plan.

The house on Tichá Street built in 1912 is nicknamed Schieszl's villa by local residents after the interwar politician Josef Schieszl, who was part of T. G. Masaryk's close collaborators and lived in the villa. Work on the house began last week. Subsequently, some neighbors began protesting against the plan, claiming it effectively constitutes a demolition and replacement of the house with a new one. They organized an online petition, which has so far been signed by about 2,700 people.

According to Kolář, this is a purposeful attempt to block a plan that has met all legal conditions and has a valid building permit. He emphasized that it is by no means a demolition. "We will preserve, according to the law, a greater part of the original house and we will add and extend some mass that the law allows us based on the calculations of the area that can be realized on those plots," said the architect.

He added that there are two villas on the plots, and the investor has had a construction-historical survey prepared for both. According to him, it clearly emerged that only the second villa, which the owner plans to carefully reconstruct, is historically significant. In the case of the one designated for expansion, two separate assessments agreed that it is not significant from an architectural perspective at all, said the architect.

"There is no builder or architect signed under that, it was more of a garden shed," Kolář stated. He added that the original form of the house has been further damaged by several insensitive reconstructions, the most significant in the 1970s, which split the villa into four apartments. The architect also denied that they did not communicate with neighbors when preparing the project, stating that he presented the project to interested neighbors.

Kolář further stated that after the protests last week, most of the work is now suspended except for those that are technically necessary. The excavator that appeared on the plots last week, according to him, was not there for the demolition of the house. "We will be dismantling it manually and that excavator was there because we had permission to remove two garages," he said. He added that on Wednesday he and Kulík will meet with the mayor of Prague 5, Radka Šimková (Prague 5 for Themselves). They are discussing a public pedestrian connection from Holečková Street to Kinského Garden, which the investor is willing to construct at his own expense.

Several publicly known personalities today published an open letter addressed to the Minister of Culture Martin Baxa (ODS), the Minister for Regional Development Ivan Bartoš (Pirates), and the Mayor of Prague Bohuslav Svoboda (ODS). They called for taking all steps to prevent demolition until the legality of the issued building permit is reviewed. Among those who signed the letter are architectural historian Zdeněk Lukeš, former ombudsman Anna Šabatová, historian and writer Pavel Kosatík, actor and director Břetislav Rychlík, and actor David Matásek.

This is not the first similar case in the area. The year before last, a similar resistance arose against a plan to demolish a villa from the early 20th century located less than a kilometer away on Nad Výšinkou Street. This villa was owned at that time by Valérie Haščáková, the wife of the co-owner of the Penta investment group, Jaroslav Haščák. After intense criticism of the demolition from local residents and politicians, the villa changed owners three times before eventually ending up in the ownership of the Rockaway Capital investment group and still stands.