The first Prague skyscraper celebrates 90 years. The functionalist dominant is awaiting reconstruction

The story of the house standing on today’s Winston Churchill Square in Prague 3 began in the 1920s with a competition. At that time, it was tendered for the construction of the headquarters of the General Pension Institute.

“Everyone was drawing the kind of standard houses that were being designed at the time, and then the architects Havlík and Honzíček came and entered the competition with this house, which was finally built,” Tomáš Kašpar, director of Dom Radost, reveals to Novinkám at the beginning.

However, in their design, the architects violated all the rules of the then-announced competition, they did not respect the city’s requirements for a block floor plan, but they still won. “Immediately there was a shout and the other contestants rioted. In addition, the winners were significantly younger than the other architects, so the whole thing evoked really strong emotions,” adds Kašpar.

With their proposal, they are said to have perfectly adapted to the needs of the General Pension Institute, and because of that they have also succeeded. “As they were functionalists and visionaries, they claimed that the house would most likely not correspond to its function in 50 years, that the needs would change. And they designed it in such a way that it could be rebuilt very easily, even a part of it could be moved elsewhere,” explained Kašpar.

However, this did not pass the proposal of the State Regulatory Commission at the time. So, instead of the originally proposed steel structure, a reinforced concrete building was built on the outskirts of the city at that time.

The building was lined with ceramic tiles, which is why it began to be referred to as a tile factory. At the time, however, the same cladding also decorated today’s Ministry of the Interior on Letná or the building of the Elektrických podnikás in Holešovice.

On the land of today’s Radosta, there were first vineyards and then the Prague municipal gas plant, which Žižkov no longer needed, as it started lighting with electricity.

The construction of the building began in 1932. First, a reinforced concrete structure was built, then it was supplemented with brick partitions. In 1933, it was time to install the necessary technologies and to cover the facade. A year later, it was already inhabited by officials of the General Pension Institute, for whom the capacity of the original headquarters on the Rašín embankment was insufficient.

At the time, the new building was astonishing with its size, not only with its height, but also with its internal floor plan. Inside, there are also four-story differences between the heights of the different parts, with the central part having 11 floors, the side arms seven, and the outer ones three.

The building was also equipped with the first air conditioner, supplied by the American company Carrier. This was needed mainly because, thanks to the cross-shaped floor plan, direct sunlight shines into all the rooms. There were offices on the upper floors, apartments for employees and also spaces for business units on the lower floors. The costs of its construction then exceeded an absolutely astronomical amount – 60 million Czechoslovak crowns.

“During the Second World War, there was an effort to protect the house from the raids of Nazi planes, so it was partially blackened so that it would not be such an attraction for those planes. In the 1950s, there was a rather unprofessional attempt at cleaning, which can still be seen today,” Kašpar explained.

After the Second World War, the Central National Insurance Company took over the building, including the agenda. In the 1950s, the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, which also acquired the building, began to deal with health insurance. The trade unions remained in the building even after 1989, when it acquired a new name – the House of Trade Unions.

However, trade unionists only used one-fifth of the building and rented out the rest, which is why they sold the building in 2018 for more than a billion crowns. Union leader Josef Středula said at the time that the main reason was precisely the excess of space and the considerably high maintenance costs.

For the last five years, the building has been owned by the Val family, who also own the SIKO company. “Today there is an effort to rebuild and change its function. Our idea and plan is to make this house an open space for people, just like the architects wanted. They designed wide boulevards here, they wanted to bring life from the outside to the inside,” explained the director of Dom Radost.

Currently, there are 700 offices inside, conference rooms, a cinema, a cafe, a corridor that can be used as a gallery, as well as a roof terrace with a bar. In the side wing at Seifertova Street, there are shops on the ground floor and apartments on the two floors above.

Today, the only renovated space in the building is the Přítomnost cinema. “It was created from an unused social hall. The chamber environment and the art program attract viewers of all age categories,” adds Tomáš Kašpar, adding that the space demonstrates how to preserve the legacy of the past while ensuring its meaningful economic use.

After the reconstruction, approximately 600 small rental apartments are to be created there, which, according to the management of the house, are lacking in Prague. The housing units will be supplemented with cultural and commercial functions. Kašpar would like to see a restaurant, bistro, cinema and fitness in the house. They are also allowed to build yards next to the building.

Kašpar, however, denies that there would be devastation of historical elements. “We want to save the house. There has been practically no investment in the building in eighty years, it has high heat losses, in its current form it does not meet today’s requirements, the building materials have become old,” he revealed.

Today, the building bears the name Radost from an internal competition, which the building’s management does not want to comment on. Hopefully, there will be more joy from him in the coming years than in the past, when his condition began to radically deteriorate.

The owners plan to celebrate the centenary already in a new coat, but they have prepared an accompanying program for the 90th anniversary celebrations. This includes the opportunity to visit the anti-missile shelter. Every visitor can walk in it, for example around the filter house, toilets or drinking water tank. “We made the cover available so that people, especially students, have the opportunity to look into some raw space, which completes the feeling of crampedness in the context of our 90-year celebration program,” explained Dom Radost press spokesman Tomáš Zemina.

The atmosphere of the tour is completed by two period rooms and the opportunity to look into the original safe. In addition, films such as All good natives, Citizen’s ID card and Joke are shown in the local cinema. A special program is also prepared for students who are accompanied on the topic of Rock and roll under the communists by the dissident and communist-imprisoned publicist František Stárek “Čuňas”.

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