The buildings of Transgas are among the most distinctive structures from the 1970s in Prague

Prague - A business card of the Transgas building complex on Vinohradská Street in Prague (the buildings will not be cultural monuments and their owner can demolish them):

- The constructions were built between 1966 and 1976 for the needs of the control center of the international gas pipeline being constructed from the Soviet Union to Czechoslovakia and further to Western Europe. It housed the Transgas Gas Central Dispatch Office and the Ministry of Fuels and Energy; later it was the headquarters of the Central Bohemian Energy Company, and now it serves as a client center for the General Health Insurance Company. The buildings were owned by the company ČEZ, which sold them to the developer group HB Reavis. They plan to demolish them and replace them with modern office buildings designed by Jakub Cigler.

- The authors of the complex in brutalist style with technical details are Jindřich Malátek, Ivo Loos, Zdeněk Eisenreich, and Václav Aulický.

- The ensemble of three buildings is located in the lower part of Vinohradská Street next to the Czech Radio building and is bounded by the streets Římská and Rubešova. The construction had to give way to two apartment buildings from the 1870s.

- The dominant feature of the complex is the suspended rectangular building of the dispatch center clad in insulation made of cobblestones. The use of gas pipeline pipes is also striking, creating a tunnel connection between all three buildings and also being used in place of railings.

- In the recessed corner of the ground floor at Římská Street, there was a fountain with the motif of a levitating sphere designed by Ivo Loos.

- A part of the representative interiors, on which Loos collaborated with architect Jan Fišer, has been preserved to this day.

- In the buildings, which are considered by some experts and the public to be among the ugliest in Prague, the most modern computer of the time in Czechoslovakia was once located. They are also well-known from the film "Vesničko má středisková," where the headquarters of the company Dřevoplech appeared.

- The Transgas buildings are located in the Vinohrady heritage zone and in the protective zone of the Prague Monument Reserve, which was declared in 1971.

- "The realization of Transgas is one of several links that maintained the mental connection of Czechoslovak architecture with European events. The boldness of the construction and architectural has within it another quality, that is the utilization of the energy of the place itself and the development of the potential for further development of this area," said curator Rostislav Koryčánek about the buildings according to www.archiweb.cz.

- The authors of the initiative to declare the buildings as a monument designated them as an outstanding example of stylistically synthetic architecture of the 1970s, combining elements of brutalism, technologicalism, and postmodernism, but also a unique realization of postmodern urbanism in the Czech territory.

- The Ministry of Culture dealt with the proposal to declare the buildings as a monument at the instigation of the Old Prague Club. The National Heritage Institute did not recommend the declaration, stating that "the affected area does not create an urban-formative environment and materially and in scale damages the environment of the city monument zone." Nevertheless, the ministerial commission began to consider the proposal. At the end of last year, the ministry decided that the complex would not be a monument. In the justification, it stated among other things that "the architectural qualities of the existing buildings do not compensate for their significant urbanistic deficiencies."

- Minister Daniel Herman began reviewing the decision of his officials this spring. At the end of September, he stated in the media that the review committee recommended reevaluating the office's approach, stating that Transgas needs to be preserved.

- Last week, the Old Prague Club informed that Minister Herman stopped the review process, thus also the provisional monument protection of the buildings. The minister's decision states, among other things, that the properties are improperly integrated into their surroundings, that the details of the buildings, facades, and railings are out of human scale, that no significant cultural-historical event took place in the area, or that the houses are not significant examples of brutalism. "The authors of the properties tried to imitate Western models, but with very questionable results," states the decision.