Zprávy památkové péče 2017, 77(4):361-372

Debate on heritage care in the 1960's. Ivo Loos, Jindřich Malátek, and Transgas

Rostislav Švácha

Ústav dějin umění AV ČR, v. v. i.

There is a debate among professionals and lay people in the Czech Republic concerning the value of architecture of the 1960's and 1970's which has parallels in other European countries. In Prague there is a special battle raging for the Transgas complex on Vinohradská Street (1967-1976), designed by architects Ivo Loos (1934-2009) and Jindřich Malátek (1931-1990). This article discusses Loos' and Malátek's texts from the 1960's, largely devoted to the practice of heritage care at the time. Both architects, in their journalistic articles, favored a so-called urban concept of protection of historical cities, a doctrine which wanted to incorporate the heritage fund of Czechoslovakia into society and was in favor of the interventions of the new architecture into the historic environment. In the 1960's, this was opposed by so-called preventive heritage care, whose followers considered the development of historic cities to be completed. Loos and Malátek represented the polemic opposite of this argument. They primarily argued that this vision forced modern architects to use "defensive" architectural forms.
In the 1985 book "The Theory of Municipal Heritage Reservations" (Teorie městských památkových rezervací), Ivo Hlobil explained that we should consider some examples of modern heritage creation, which the theory of the 1960's called a "symbiosis" or "synthesis" of the old and new, as an architectural symbol of the urban concept of the protection of historical cities. These include, for example, the completion of the monastery of St. Agnes in Prague (1964-1977) or the new facade of the church in the Emmaus Monastery in Prague (1965-1968). This article adds the symbiosis of the Transgas complex to these examples.
There is a considerable aversion among the professional staff of Czech institutions of heritage conservation to the symbiotic experiments of the 1960's. This has also appeared in attempts to declare Transgas as a state-protected monument; various civic initiatives, headed by the Old Prague Club, have promoted the declaration of this site as a memorial, while the institutions of state heritage care have torpedoed this effort. The last part of this article discusses how the standpoint of state heritage care has resulted in a professional decline in the case of the Transgas complex.

Keywords: Jindřich Malátek, Ivo Loos, postwar architecture, theory of architecture and heritage care, Transgas

Published: December 1, 2017  Show citation