Zprávy památkové péče 2020, 80(1):46-63 | DOI: 10.56112/zpp.2020.1.07

The inconspicuous charm of panels; the regeneration of housing estates from the point of view of heritage care

Hana Řepková

The article follows the path of Czech housing estates from ubiquitous gray to ubiquitous colors and compares the approaches of Western and Eastern Europe. The development of housing estates in Eastern Europe was completed in the 1990s, whereas in Western Europe this already took place at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. Housing estates there were partially demolished from the 1980s and, most of all, humanized. Western European housing estates have been documented since the 1970s, major publications have been published since the 1990s, and a discussion on heritage protection for selected areas has begun. Czech housing estates have been documented since about 2005, with most of the existing literature on housing estates being published around 2015.
In Western Europe, housing estates are almost exclusively owned by the state or municipalities and are managed by housing companies. Regeneration here is carried out comprehensively in accordance with an architectural design for the entire area. After November 1989, Czechoslovakia did not accept the know-how offered by the European Academy and, contrary to recommendations, privatized houses and restituted lands in housing estates. Together with the post-revolutionary revaluation of property rights and the inconsistent application of laws, privatization is now one of the main reasons for the uncontrolled development of Czech housing estates. As a result, the state and cities have largely shifted responsibility for the condition of housing estates to their inhabitants. An even bigger problem than the appearance of the apartment buildings today is the deterioration of their civic facilities (with the exception of school buildings) and their degradation, the effort to replace them with disproportionately larger apartment buildings, and the concept-less development of green areas.
Housing estates are viewed by conservationists with the experience of a state administrative official. The Prague aggregates of Jižní Město and Severní Město, as well as Prague 6, present conceptual work with facades of prefabricated houses and the possibilities of regulating them in domestic Czech conditions.
Drawing from the above experiences and the ongoing results of research on modernist housing estates, the article also deals with several myths commonly held among the professional public. The myth that all housing estates are the same is confronted with research carried out under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic; the myths that all prefabricated houses have poor insulation properties and that thermal insulation irreversibly devalues prefabricated houses and prevents them from enjoying heritage protection are compared to experiences from abroad. The claim made by experts that the protection of prefabricated housing estates should have already started in the 1990s is compared with domestic considerations about their demolition in the 1980s and 1990s. The myth that a house's appearance is solely the responsibility of its owners is confronted with the provisions of the Building Act. A list of domestic subsidy programs is provided in which defects in panel structures were first consistently removed, followed by support for individual proposals for the insulation of houses, regardless of their position in the urban complex. This resulted in the Housing Regeneration Program, under the auspices of the Ministry of Regional Development, ambitiously serving to renew the archaic network of paths and dilapidated playgrounds and to supplement parking areas, something incomparable with programs applied to housing estates in Western European.
With the current fragmented ownership system of housing estates, any possibility of their comprehensive regeneration exists only in enlightened municipalities and a civil society where people are not only interested in a quality living environment, but are also willing to do something for them. A growing respect for the heritage of the past and thus the heritage of architectural modernity is a significant trend in Western Europe today. Illustrative examples include prefabricated houses in the Netherlands and France, originally proposed for demolition, whose recent renovation respecting the modernist character of the buildings has repeatedly won world awards in the Mies van der Rohe competition.

Keywords: Housing estate, humanization, regeneration, heritage protection, municipality, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Ministry of Regional Development, concept, regulation, color, subsidy, insulation

Published: March 1, 2020  Show citation