<div class="news-item"> <h2>Civic initiative wants to save Transgas, whose demolition has begun</h2> </div>

Prague - The civic initiative SOS Transgas wants to save the Transgas building complex on Vinohradská street in Prague. They called on Culture Minister Antonín Staněk (ČSSD) in a letter to initiate a new process for declaring Transgas a cultural monument. The demolition of the 1970s buildings was approved this January, and the company HB Reavis, which owns the complex, has begun preparatory work. The actual demolition of the buildings, expected to finish in the autumn, started at the end of March.

The initiative's call is a response to the Culture Ministry's statements in early April regarding the heritage protection of the Kotva department store on the ministry's website. "I will never allow Kotva to end up like the Transgas case: assures and explains Minister of Culture Staněk," reads the headline of the published report. Thus, according to the initiative, the ministry has openly acknowledged its failure.

"We therefore urge you (...), to reopen the Transgas case and initiate a process for declaring Transgas a cultural monument, which was concluded in November 2017 by a political ad hoc decision of the former Minister of Culture Mr. Daniel Herman (KDU-ČSL)," the initiative writes in the letter to the ministry.

Despite the fact that the owner has already begun the demolition, with no partitions left in the buildings and the roof slowly disappearing, according to Václav Aulický, one of the authors of the complex, preserving the buildings is still possible. "What is valuable about those buildings is the steel structure made by Jiří Kozák, who also worked on the Federal Assembly building," said Veronika Vicherková on behalf of the initiative.

According to the initiative, preserving the buildings could facilitate cooperation with the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Transgas lies on an axis that connects significant public buildings on the edge of the heritage reservation.

At the beginning of February, the building owner announced plans to sell Transgas or the already vacant land. This led the initiative to label HB Reavis as a speculator. "They intend to sell it with other ongoing projects they have here," Vicherková said, noting that Prague, which expressed interest in the complex, had no chance to succeed because of this.

The initiative considers the Transgas complex an example of post-war buildings that represent a valuable component of cultural heritage. However, according to SOS Transgas, the state does not treat them that way, and the ministry does not even have a list of buildings that were previously proposed for landmark status, making it unable to address this issue effectively.

Often, according to Vicherková, the sites where these buildings stand are viewed merely as building lots. "We thought that the demolition of the Ještěd department store in Liberec would be a sufficient reminder to prevent such things from happening again," she added. Ještěd was demolished in 2009 despite protests.

The plan to demolish the group of buildings has sparked debates about the architecture of the socialist era, which has both supporters and critics. The Club for Old Prague suggested that the Culture Ministry declare them a monument. The Prague office of the National Heritage Institute did not recommend the declaration, stating that "the area does not create an urban environment and, in terms of mass and scale, damages the integrity of the urban heritage zone." The Ministry did not declare the buildings a landmark in November 2017.