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Bringing the past into the present

Architect Vlado Milunić would like to rid the city of the ubiquitous panelák

By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
November 21st, 2007 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST
Croatian architect Vlado Milunić calls Prague "the city of the tower, not the skyscraper."
COURTESY PHOTO
The Dancing House shows off Milunić's signature style.
COURTESY PHOTO
A bold residential housing building in Petřiny shows off Milunić's signature style.
V Jámě 10

Prague 1
Tel.: 222 231 989
Web: www.arch.cz/Milunic

When describing his decades’ worth of work, Vlado Milunić likes to use visual aids. The Croatian-born architect who has been living in Prague since he was a teenager constantly pulls out everything from coffee-table books to cardboard and wood models of his various creations. The walls of his work space are covered with photos of family and friends, articles torn from newspapers, maps, and seemingly random keepsake images such as posters of polar bears and cowboys. It’s like a living, breathing diorama filled with visual stimulation for him to draw on and refer to.  
In addition to citing what inspires him when discussing his career, Milunić, 66, is quick to decry what he sees as negative aspects of Prague architecture. As the co-creator of a once hotly debated local work himself — the Dancing House along the city’s riverbank — his experience and opinions carry some weight.
During a recent sit-down in his cluttered New Town studio, it wasn’t long before the conversation turned to skyscrapers, one of Milunić’s pet peeves. The architect has repeatedly gone on record with his disdain for the idea of these tall structures dotting the landscape of Prague’s outer ring.  
“I think Prague is the city of the tower, not the skyscraper,” he says. New architectural works constructed in Prague must evidence some relationship to the city’s pre-existing buildings — something that’s lacking, at least according to Milunić, in generic skyscrapers, but that appears to be a constant in the architect’s own work.  
The Dancing House, for example, “relates to the history of Prague. Its architecture is Baroque but also has some relationship to Renaissance and Cubism,” Milunić notes.
Milunić’s relationship with this particular project goes back several decades to when it was just the vacant site of a World War II casualty. He lived in a building adjacent to the site, in a flat right next door to future President Václav Havel. He and Havel used to discuss ideas of what to do with the site, and, when Havel became president, he cleared the way for Milunić to design the new work.
Milunić says he wanted the building to somehow reflect “time of the Velvet Revolution.” Two discarded drafts for the building included one with images of Joan of Arc and another shaped like a woman doing a striptease, sort of like a symbol of the country shedding the restrictive communist government, Milunić explains.
The final concept came from Milunić’s vision of Czechoslovakia as being “so full of energy that it cracks” but also being “two parts in dialogue” coming together for a visual portrait that would reflect “Czech society at the time.”
Famed American architect Frank Gehry was brought on to work with Milunić in realizing the building, a move Milunić says went very well. “I like to communicate with somebody. … Frank was fantastic.”
While Milunić made sure to tie this building in with other landmark periods of Czech architecture, he is on a quest to eliminate another: Prague’s paneláks, or prefabricated high-rises.
Milunić believes that, with their dull exteriors and uninspiring parking lots, these structures ruin the aesthetics and environment of Prague’s outlying areas. He designed one residential building in Petřiny in direct response to this problem and situated it directly within a cluster of paneláks.
His creation stands out, an angular, multifaceted take on the rectangular boxes, painted in bold red and yellow. The end result is ironic, he says, because people who can afford to live in the new apartment building have only gray paneláks outside their windows, while those within the gray paneláks but who can’t afford a new flat now benefit from a colorful view.
Milunić has more ideas for modifying paneláks, including the addition of wooden villas on top of pre-existing structures to add balconies and energy efficiency, but none has yet been realized.
In a final diatribe about today’s architectural scene, Milunić weighed in on the controversial plans for the new national library by Jan Kaplický. He has no qualms with its much-debated design, rather it is the location in Letná he opposes. He believes it is too far from the buildings of Charles University and hence the students who could benefit from the library.
“Prague’s scale is fantastic,” he says — small enough and pedestrian-friendly enough for people to interact. “That’s one important part of the Prague identity: the human scale.”
This affinity for walking cities can be traced to his roots, Milunić says. Because his ancestors hail from both Central Europe and the Mediterranean, “I say I am the middle road between Dresden and Montenegro.” The seaside cities of narrow streets have provided him with constant inspiration, he says, and a firm belief that “cities must be compact.”
In one of his current projects, an entire mixed-use complex in Kazakhstan, Milunić is trying to replicate this compact model of small streets and close-together buildings, with no “wide open spaces” like what he sees in the United States.
In his spare time, Milunić teaches at the Czech Technical University, where he earned his degree. In addition to promoting his ideals of architecturally inspiring, compact cities, he says he hopes to teach his students “to push society in a good way, to respect old people, to respect the children” through their architecture.  
“I want to produce something people are using,” he says, “social buildings, for all people in Prague.”

Brooke Edge can be reached at specialsection@praguepost.com


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