PRAGUE Architecture and City Development - What to know before you go to Prague?

What is that important in Prague regarding architecture and city development, so you should know it before you get there? What the city of Prague can offer to travelers, professionals, and curious minds when we talk about architecture, public spaces, and urban development? In an informal but plausible manner, professor Tanja Conley is giving a 15 minutes’ answer to those questions in a leap from the first squares and streets that defined the city, to the most contemporary architecture in Prague.

Prague is one of the rare cities in Europe whose original street patterns have been almost fully preserved since the foundation of the city. When you open the plan of Prague you immediately notice where the first city walls had been laid along with the radial movement of today’s Narodni (People’s) and Street, clearly delineating the line between the Old Town and the New Town. The boundary between the two towns is not modern, it dates back to the 14th century – the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles the IV, who ambitiously extended the city and wrapped it into new city walls, embracing the territory which would not be filled up by urban fabric until the early 20th century.
The birth of the city from two nuclei, the elevated settlements of Hradcany and Vysehrad, the fortified residences with the prince palace and the cathedral. The development of the irregular settlement, Mala Strana, down Hradcany hill grew out of the need to serve the palace. The communication between the two fortresses gave birth to market places, latter squares in the Old Town and Mala Strana at first connected by the wooden bridge over the Vltava river. Building the permanent structures instead of temporary stands and shelters around these markets were the first isolated clusters of buildings that would later be fused into dense, continuous organic urban fabric linking both sides of the Vltava.
The archeology of Prague can be revealed twofold, digging underneath but also by pilling off the layers of facades.
The modernization started with the development of the districts beyond the demolished walls. As these were the fields where the vineyards had been the upcoming class settled at Vinohgrady, while the working class settled at Ziskov oriented towards the Vltava. The famous turn of the century Czech Modernism manifested itself through brave forms and new materials but was always sensitive to the question of both historic and natural context – one of the best examples is the Manes Art Society Building.
The mid-20th century conservation as well as contemporary development has never forgotten the inherited contexts. Even starchitecture such as Frank Gehry’s Dancing House fits into its flamboyant Baroque-looking surroundings. The more recent plans for the development of the Vltava banks take into account the scale, character, and shape of the existing setting and pay attention to the continuity of urban visions and planning documents that had been envisioned through the course of the twentieth century.

This is the second part of our video series UNLOCKING THE CITY.

Authors: Tanja Conley, professor of theory and history of architecture and urban development, and Damir Kovacic, architecture journalist and video producer.

Music: Rastko Aksentijevic

VIDEO and PHOTO ATTRIBUTIONS at URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PL9_xIMZx_4tNgtmVvOQmO85kupQz3WN7AMr9jSsmD0/edit?usp=sharing