Zprávy památkové péče 2015, 75(4):357-364

Prefab housing estates caught between attitudes of adoration and revulsion

Karel Kuča

The essay summarizes the main themes and issues related to the heritage protection of housing estates. The introduction recalls the historical preconditions of the formation of housing estates - attempts to find a new urban structure associated with the demolition of traditional city blocks had already been carried out in the 1920's. Several significant "pre-housing estate" realizations are mentioned here from the interwar period (e.g. Zlín, brněnský Tábor), the war period (Osada in Horní Litvínov), and in the immediate post-war period (housing estate Solidarita).
The next part focuses on massive housing and estate construction projects after 1948. The article shows that this was not motivated by a real lack of housing, but by a massive wave of resettlement related to the restructuring of Czech industry - the population shifted from traditional settlements to the newly established areas of heavy industry which needed to be equipped with mass housing.
The essay goes on to discuss the actual value of housing estate architecture. It stresses that a large part of this architectural fund falls within the range of architectural average and below average, mainly due to the industrial standardization of the projects and by the low quality of their execution. The article proposes making a differentiation in the quality of a housing estate by the quality of its urban representation, diversity of mass composition, integration into the urban and landscape backdrop, and by the quality of the architectural representation of its individual buildings. It also discusses criteria for the assessment of their quality and summarizes the issues and challenges that efforts to protect their heritage often encounter.
The conclusion discusses the question of the authenticity of the current state of housing estates and the possibility of their heritage protection. It mentions problems that may stand in the way of more effective protection of more valuable estates as well. The first problem is the low authenticity of the architecture due to massive reconstruction works after 1989. Another fundamental problem is the expired service life and unsatisfactory condition of the materials, greatly reducing the possibility of recovery with respect to their original condition. The article points out that it is not only the preserved urban structure which is critical to the declaration of overall heritage preservation, but also the originality of the preserved architecture. For many valuable housing estates, heritage protection should therefore be subject to coordinated reconstruction work carried out in the spirit of the original design. In the meantime, it is therefore appropriate to devote attention to less demanding methods of protection as well, such as protection through building regulations, territorial planning, etc.

Keywords: housing estates, heritage protection, estate-lovers, estate-haters, architecture and urbanism of the second half of the 20th century

Published: December 1, 2015  Show citation