The architecture of the Castle does not need to be repaired, but filled with meaning, believes Pleskot.

Prague - According to architect Josef Pleskot, the premises of Prague Castle do not require significant construction interventions. As a symbol, it is essentially finished architecturally. According to the creator, with whom President Petr Pavel plans to collaborate, the castle area needs to be opened, cleaned up, and a few informal connections in the form of paths should be added, along with the demolition of fences. It is functioning hardware that needs to start finding meaningful software, Pleskot told ČTK today after he and Pavel walked through a large part of the Castle.

Pavel began discussing possible collaboration with Pleskot soon after his election as president. Pleskot liked the offer of cooperation but does not speak of the role of castle architect. "If there will be any role for me, it will be more conceptual, advisory, creative in the sense of devising a program and possible connections, which is actually more architecture for me now at this stage of my life than designing a railing," said the seventy-year-old architect.

He reminds that the role of castle architect held by Jože Plečnik during the presidency of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was different from the role of Bořek Šípek during Václav Havel's presidency. "And the role of architect XY for Petr Pavel will be yet another. Democracy has somehow passed through fire, a test, it is more mature. I do not want to say it is mature, but it is in some stage, and it is not identical to what it was under Masaryk or Havel. Not that there isn't work to be done in the field of architecture at the Castle today, but some projects were also competed for during Václav Havel's time; I participated in them myself. So it’s not the case that someone, like Josef Pleskot, gets a lifelong fiefdom at Prague Castle," he explains.

According to him, the Castle area is not in a deplorable state from a construction perspective. "And it is certainly in a deplorable state from a conceptual point of view, functional fulfillment; it is hardware that does not serve as well as it could. We completely agreed on that," he said.

"We agreed that Prague Castle must become an open discussion platform for all the problems that exist in society and which may even be emerging within established democracies. Whether these are initiatives of a cultural nature, in the field of scientific research, environmental needs, social sciences, or debates about the position of women in society," he outlined their common intentions. He admitted that five years as a presidential term is not a very long time to implement large plans. "But if we are diligent, hopefully, that would be enough to come up with that software," he added. According to him, it is necessary to devise the meaning of the castle area so that it transcends its borders and becomes attractive to everyone in the Czech Republic and beyond. "We agreed that Prague Castle must be not only the center of Prague but of the entire Czech Republic and the whole Central European region," said Pleskot.

The architect believes that few people realize that when talking about opening the Castle, it also means mental opening. "It's not just about opening some closed doors, of which there are, by the way, quite a few," he specified. From practical tasks, tourists need to be offered visitor centers. "At least two, preferably three, should be created to provide visitors with services, to take care of children, drink and food, to give them basic information, so that a person does not have to fear when traveling to Prague that they cannot afford to pay for lunch. And the activities of the regions should also be reflected in the center," he recalled.