The position of the authors of the OD Máj reconstruction project

Dear friends,

I would like to respond to the open letter from the Club for Old Prague regarding the reconstruction of the department store Máj on Národní třída dated April 26, 2020.

I am one of the authors of the original design, and for the past two years, I have been working intensively with John Eisler – the second of the three original authors – on the proposal and discussion of the new appearance of the department store Máj.

I am convinced that the version approved by the Heritage Conservation Department of the City of Prague is a great victory for heritage conservation, and the Club for Old Prague also has its share in this. Let us remember that when we designed the department store Máj in the 1970s, we did so according to contemporary criteria. Based on the understanding at that time of how a department store should function. It wasn't functioning well then, and today it doesn't function at all. This is not unusual. This state puts relentless pressure on a large number of buildings from that era and often leads to their total destruction. Let us recall the infamous department store Ještěd in Liberec by Karel Hubáček and Miroslav Masák. Unfortunately, this extraordinarily interesting building has become essentially unusable as a department store in today's context, which has led to its demise. Surely, we can find more stories with a similar plot and ending, even in Prague.

Our proposal for the reconstruction of the department store Máj preserves, for the most part, the existing appearance of the building. It retains its silhouette, its façade. It also preserves the fine details. The department store Máj, as a cultural monument, has been preserved for future generations thanks to the diligent efforts of many experts – including members of the Club for Old Prague. We have succeeded in saving it! It took a tremendous amount of work, but I believe this small miracle has been accomplished.

A very delicate and subtle structure has been added to the roof, roughly in the volume of the originally intended and never realized parking garage, which aligns the mass of the building with the context created by the construction of Quadrio. This mass is set back into the third plane and pushed back a few meters from the street façade, so from much of Spálená Street, only smaller parts are visible, and it is hardly noticeable from Národní třída. It is most evident when viewed through binoculars from Petřín. And it is certainly not prominent in its immediate surroundings in its scale. Just take a walk along Národní třída and look around.

The expression of the building towards Národní třída remains completely preserved. And the retracted silhouette of Máj remains intact. Moreover, the extension allows it to fully act. Thanks to it, the silhouette is expressed in full measure and remains preserved as a historical trace – it was created at the strict request of the Department of the Chief Architect and heritage authorities in the 1970s, justified by the fact that the department store Máj should respond to the original historical buildings in the place of today's Quadrio. It is paradoxical that shortly after the completion of the building, these houses were demolished and replaced by the metro station building.

I consider the existence of the extension to be part of the victory. A victory from the perspective of the composition of the city. The original context has completely disappeared, and between the mass of Máj and Quadrio lies a sort of narrow gorge, which has little place in the street front in the center of Prague. It acts like a decayed tooth. If you walk down Spálená Street, instead of street façades, you suddenly see façades perpendicular to the street – the rear façade of Máj and the side of Quadrio. By adding a delicate and harmonious wedge of the extension, the street front will be supplemented, and the view from the intersection of Spálená and Národní streets will also be improved. Today, Quadrio is prominent in this view with its uncovered corner and suppresses the effect of the retracted silhouette of Máj. The extension to the department store Máj will cover part of Quadrio and create a clear and typically Prague structure, where the corner building is the department store Máj, and Quadrio is the building facing Spálená Street.

The approved design preserves the vast majority of the expressive elements of the original design and its material structure; the proposed modifications sensitively correct the response of the building to the surrounding context and help the building function economically. From a construction, structural, and technological standpoint, there will undeniably be a valuation of the object and a modernization that will effectively allow, after a forty-year period of neglected maintenance, its continued prosperous existence. Such an approach is not only correct and beneficial for the building and the city but also aligns with the current approach to heritage conservation. The presented proposal is a victory in the effort to save and preserve the department store Máj in its protected form.

For the completeness of my statement, I would like to add that the Club for Old Prague used, without verifying this fact in any way, either intentionally or out of ignorance, visualization that is almost two years old, which originated in the initial phase of the project and was subsequently completely changed based on dozens of discussions with the heritage conservation department. The project, which the city officials rightfully green-lit, is entirely different from what is presented in the material from the Club for Old Prague.

In Prague, on May 1, 2020