Autoři
Čechová, K.
Publikováno v
Architektúra a urbanizmus. 2019, 53(3-4), 196-211. ISSN 0044-8680.
Rok
2019
Ústav
Anotace
In Prague, as in many European metropolises, there are large
quarters of urban housing blocks, built in the end of the 19th
century and the beginning of the 20th century, located in the immediate vicinity
of the historical core. In the period of post-Stalinist easing, these quarters faced
a serious threat of demolition: considered unhealthy, devoid of
value, based on an utterly unrepairable urban structure. The capitalist city was doomed to demolition in favour of a new, socialist environment. Nevertheless, within the three decades between 1958 and 1989, a new attitude
was formed within the professional community of architects
and urbanists: considerably less radical and more aware of the
values of existing urban structures and the limitations of new
development. The story of this shift between the concepts oft
redevelopment and modernization is the main topic of
this paper.
The specific Czech version of the redevelopment-modernization dilemma can be framed by the concept of the continuation
of technocratic modernity. According to the interpretation of contemporary historians, the trust in
expert knowledge and the knowledge-based leadership was one
of the main continuities between the post-Stalinist period of the
Prague Spring, and the normalization period of the 1970s and 1980s
in occupied Czechoslovakia. In this sense, the inability of those
in power to deliver as promised – in respect to redevelopment
and modernization, both in quality and quantity – represents an
important step in the process of delegitimization of state socialism towards the end of 1980s. The break with the first, technocratic modernity was not completed in Czechoslovakia; the process of reflecting on the consequences of its own foundations
was violently interrupted by the occupation of 1968, and it was
not picked up again until the late 1980s. The rather hidden manifestations of such setting represent an important inner
barrier for the project of Czech urban renewal.