Prague's Brutalist Buildings

Ask most people about Prague’s rich architecture, and they’ll likely mention the Castle, the historic Charles Bridge, some of the Art Nouveau and Neo-Gothic buildings, or, occasionally, faceted cubist facades.

Few people would come up with an image of Prague’s brutalist Transgas complex. Built in 1978 close to Wenceslas Square, the complex housed imposing blocks with long windows, covered in steel or small cobble stones. The surrounding décor was designed to evoke gas pipelines. One of the project’s key architects, Václav Aulický, would go on to design the Czech capital’s high-tech Žižkov TV Tower.

Transgas was a testament to Prague’s mostly forgotten brutalist epoch. The Czech Republic — then part of Czechoslovakia — was under communist rule from 1948 to 1989. And while socialism changed the country’s social fabric, it also shaped its urban landscapes. During those four decades, Prague underwent one of the most intense waves of development in the city’s history, largely driven by brutalist and socialist-modernist projects similar to those in the Soviet Union. Even close to Prague’s main thoroughfares, prefabricated housing estates sprouted up everywhere. These buildings still provide homes to roughly a quarter of all Prague residents today.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/3By5N5v