Attention, Tesco shoppers: You are visiting a cultural landmark.

To many expats, the most important thing about the supermarket at Národní třída is that it's a place where you can stock up on those still-hard-to-come-by flavors from home. To Czechs older than 30, the building summons memories of waiting in endless lines just to get a shopping basket.

Architects and urban planners see something else, though: An idiosyncratic building that serves as a rare testament to the fact that not all communist-era architecture was the same bland schlock.

The Culture Ministry apparently agrees with them and has decided to award the boxy, unassuming department store the status of a cultural landmark.

"You really have to judge the building within the context of its era," says Zdeněk Lukeš, an architect and one of the country's most respected urban historians. "There were so few interesting projects happening here in the '70s. This one really stood out. It certainly deserves cultural landmark status."

Tesco Stores, which owns the building, is not greeting this recognition happily.

Spokeswoman Jana Matoušková says the company might appeal the Culture Ministry's designation. The reason?

Historical and cultural landmarks have special protection and their owners are not allowed to change their appearance in any way.

Tesco Stores plans next year to extensively renovate the building to modernize its interior, and had even been considering tearing the building down.

Now the entire structure is protected as a landmark, and the company might need to change its plans.

"The owner of a landmark must maintain the building in good condition," Culture Ministry spokeswoman Ludmila Kadrnková says. "The use of the landmark must also be appropriate for its original cultural or political meaning."

Matoušková says Tesco Stores is weighing its options. "We haven't scrapped our plans to modernize yet; the interior desperately needs an update."

Architectural historian Rostislav Švácha appealed to the Culture Ministry to take action. He had been concerned since this past February, when he learned that Tesco had applied for a permit to tear the building down.

Lukeš says, however, that the conditions applied to landmarks are too strict. "It's a bit ridiculous," he says. "There is no distinction made whether the landmark is a Gothic cathedral or Modernist architecture."

Western and daring

Before the Tesco was a Tesco, it was a K-mart. And, before 1989, the building housed Máj, a communist-era department store, the politically sanctioned name of which recalled May 1 processions celebrating the proletarian worker.

Designed in 1975 by the Liberec-based architectural studio SIAL, the same studio that created the iconic Ještěd hotel, Máj was the brainchild of architects Miroslav Masák, Martin Rajniš and John Eisler.

"It was a very exciting project at the time, one of the few that actually tried to keep step with the Western trends in architecture at the time," Lukeš says.

The building almost proved too much for communist authorities at the time. Originally, it was to have a giant yellow number painted on its facade, but the communists found this too Western and daring.

It won't be long before the building gains a neighbor, a shopping complex planned for the lot on top of the Národní třída metro station. Construction is to start next year, and the mall, when completed, will be called Copa Centrum Národní.

Project coordinator Petr Bělovský says that the Tesco's new status will not have any impact on construction. "Our project will complement the building," he says.

Lukeš, for his part, says that the two buildings should work well in conjunction.