Re-grounding the Peripheries of Historical Prague:
An approximate convergence of environmental and figural influences
across an unstable horizon
Elan Fessler
Architect
Elan Architects, Prague
This paper presents a theoretical project for one site in central Prague where skyscrapers currently exist and new ones are planned. Based on concepts from the city's medieval core, the paper will discuss what can be called contemporary-historical architecture in the contemporary-historical city, as a fusion of the figurative and environmental. The theme focuses on the integral connection between the central area and its periphery at all scales of the cityscape, from city districts to the urban block.
In this contemporary, theoretical project, as in the medieval city, public urban space and structures are forced together through many overlapping possibilities of origin and extensions into the diffused and multi-faceted edge.
In Prague, the layers and relationships of the land, the built structures and the wandering subject are fundamental to the city's history and daily life. But this celebrated urban cohesion and feeling is today at risk from the pressures of new constructions. An imbalance is developing between historical places and their "non-historical" settings, and extending into territorial disconnections and new sprawls.
To deal with this predicament, a concept that blurs distinction between the center and periphery will be explored in theory, and applied to a specific widely contested and politically problematic site on the threshold of the city's UNESCO designated Heritage Buffer Zone.
The site of Pankrac Plain is historically relevant as a crossroads between the medieval city's southern entrance and a westward path to the river. The first important structure in this area, a water tower, is a national landmark and, until 1974, the most significant element upon the horizon. The current development proposed for this site ignores the layered historical, social and environmental aspects of the place. Being marketed as a business area, funded by private investors, the current development includes no master plan with a broad or inclusive vision. Officially this site is not 'worth protection' by the city and it is thus being zoned, planned and developed as if it were an empty space without any context, excepting its privileged, elevated view of the medieval center.
Conventional development strategies that maximize commercial value and iconic status will be contrasted in this paper with those that encourage interaction and integration with their urban settings. In this paper, I propose an architecture that builds knowledge of what existed prior to it. The case study for an alternative urban design and planning concepts at the interstitial urban site of Pankrac Plain will be presented below. In order to provide the background, setting and character of this complex site, the formation of the broader city and its relevance to 21st century urban form will also be briefly discussed.
Geological Urban Formation
In ancient times, Prague was a flood plain. As the water drained away, it carved an expressive, volumetric form into the land. People of Neolithic settlements, originally situated upon hilltops, followed down the paths of these valleys into the low river basin to trade. In this basin was founded the city of Prague, centered on a large market and protected by geological fortifications. These fortifications later became Prague castle and Vysehrad castle. The central market of the city was a place which allowed the most broad and encompassing views back into the surroundings.
The hills and horizons of the greater landscape were thus "planned" by extension into the foundation of the young city. As the city grew, its extensions followed the already existing geologically carved routes that defined the landscape. Thus, the city of Prague's medieval form, nestled in the low lands, and its many panoramas across horizons and hills, express an organic unity which makes the periphery structurally inseparable from the center.
The New Town of 1348
The continuity and cohesion across Prague's expansive terrain is supported by the formal communication between geological and cultural landmarks, and is best exemplified by the New Town plan of 1348. The plan employed an expansion strategy that intended to preserve and extend the existing character of the land, to integrate existing with new communities and to develop cultural and economical diversity. This was articulated through the plan's overarching vision, form, program and mythology.
Vision of the New Town
The visionary planning of the 1348 New Town of Prague offers tools and principles for contemporary planning. At that time, Prague was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and considered to be the New Jerusalem. The plan for the New Town envisioned an urban structure that incorporated many new centers into the existing topology and social fabrics. It permitted morphological and typological diversity within a territory which was planned to become increasingly dense over time. The plan combined historical-geographical conditions of the landscape with the intangible idea of site-specific meanings and a conceptual notion of 'place'.
The organizational principle that defines the New Town is an overlapping of radial and centralized superstructures into a single urban framework. These two schematic orders were designed to maintain their principal forms, despite a future extension beyond the new city limits. The concept of a 'Golden Cross', as the structural joint between the urban core and the horizons as well as between the terrestrial and celestial realms, signified and embodied the physical and spiritual heart of the new city.
Form of the New Town
The first organizational form of the New Town is radial. It originates from Prague Castle and extends into the three main visual directions of the natural landscape. Each direction was grounded with an infrastructural artery, which connected critical topological points, and each artery established a new, central market for trade. Additionally, each market's form reflects the topography where it is situated, as well as the nature of its particular function. These new, secondary urban centers, around the Old Town square, therefore are spaces that not only provide services, but also represent their site-specificity within their broader, interstitial role of joining urban and rural trade.
The second organizational form is centralized. It ties together these three diverging directions and centers, and unites them under an overarching civic structure. This takes the form of a constellation of towers, a conceptual cross of four elevated points which mark the locations of each new square, and span the breadth of the new city. This singular, multi-nodal form articulated the different scales of the territory and its local centers.
Program of the New Town
The tallest buildings and largest squares belonged to the State and they defined the dominant form and radial-centralized framework for the developing city. To articulate the difference between the State and the society, in this newly established city, two grounds were created. These grounds were metaphorical and also physical. They served to express the terrestrial and the celestial domains as a singular, but two-layered landscape: a "celestial-terrestrial topology". While the level of the State was ideal, the level of society was subject to forces of time.
Local development was allowed to follow freely, within the conceptually-arranged and terrestrially-informed parameters. A clearly defined road infrastructure was drawn from existing conditions such as geographical limits, established trade routes, and merchant settlements. This transportation infrastructure was a functional system used to connect the main urban centers. However, as it followed the irrational shape of the land its pattern acquired an irregular form. The civic towers representing the State on the other hand are unaffected by these terrestrial forms. Their placement is purely geometric and therefore their meaning retains an intangible and immutable value.
Mythology of the New Town
The image of the city at nighttime, or from the surrounding hills, reveals the character of this dual physical-metaphysical urban vision, as an emblematic form. The tops of the 'Golden Cross', the highest structures, would be illuminated at night as they were observation towers in medieval times. The boundary of the city wall as well as the urban clusters of the markets would amplify the terrestrial details of this overall composition. At a distance, one would see the bare, structural layers of the city as a syntactical constellation; as indicative of its internal relations, and thereby as intelligible. From this point of view, the 'Golden Cross' would be perceived to be the union of the new polycentric city, and as the multi-dimensional convergence of its urban spaces.
21st Century Buffer Zone
The 21st century extension of the center into the periphery could present an opportunity to revisit the New Town's principles and organizational vision. Millions of square meters of new construction are being proposed within vast and unbroken territories across the urban panorama. The areas of Prague's outer ring which extend beyond the buffer zone are being developed abstractly, according to the rationale of automobile transport systems, suburban enclaves and sprawling shopping centers. However, as we have seen, development in the buffer zone, only 1 km beyond the medieval core, already holds the latent conceptual foundations of the New Town's master plan.
The concept presented in the medieval New Town, of a polycentric urban field that interconnects the periphery with the center, applies as well to these sites in the buffer zone. As each of these future development sites could become a new urban center, like a microcosm of the whole city structure, each has its own core, extensions and periphery.
Vision of a New Center In Between
The site of Pankrac Plain is located in the Buffer Zone upon Prague's first horizon and offers an ideal location to reconnect the 21st century city center and periphery. While already existing skyscrapers are highly visible and purport to mark an important location upon the horizon, few public activities actually take place at the site. In the following proposal, the vision, form, program and mythology behind the new center are expressed in terms which relate to both the local environment and the larger background.
New Vysehrad
Like the New Town of 1348, this contemporary, theoretical project, called New Vysehrad, proposes a range of scales, civic nodes, site-influenced morphologies, gradual building accumulation, radial infrastructure, and an overall architectural legibility. These components together address the continued and fundamental urban problems of historical and spatial continuity, the skyline and the site.
The proposal acknowledges and interconnects urban elements across the overall panorama, within its topological field, and within its own boundaries. This matrix of interaction expands the city at three scales, while localizing an approximate place of origin. These three complementary scales engage underused local infrastructure, undervalued heritage, and uninvolved communities. Through this multi-scalar strategy, lateral connections between landmarks, historical continuity into the visual depth of the city, and site-specific dialogue and interaction are addressed within one urban form.
The main aim of New Vysehrad, as it concerns the historical panorama, is two-fold: to diminish the visual impact of the existing 20th century high-rise towers and to prepare a formal language for visual continuity across the horizon. The aim of New Vysehrad as it concerns the ground is also two-fold: to bring historically significant, but forgotten, urban axes back into the present, while transforming their meaning into an intimate social fabric and public forum.
An additional aim of New Vysehrad is to amplify cultural value outside of the Historical Center. A proposed subterranean shuttle links the center of New Vysehrad to the Nusle water tower and a westward park above the river. The shuttle shares a stop with an existing subway line and offers a quick transfer to the medieval center. The original paths which emanated from the water tower to the medieval city and to the river are therein reconstructed through this underground infrastructural joint, and re-signified in value through New Vysehrad.
Form - Peripheral and Central
In New Vysehrad, as in the New Town, the combination of a peripheral network and a polycentric network produce the master plan. The plan for New Vysehrad draws connections between important urban elements of the surroundings, most significantly Vysehrad castle (an epicenter of ancient Prague) and the Nusle water tower (the first civic tower in the area), which serves an additional function to diffuse cultural tourism from the medieval core into a broader network.
Vysehrad castle is a massive fortress which sits upon a geological formation that juts into the river. Its prominent, monumental corners are distinctly geometrical and define its pentagonal form. The central area of New Vysehrad, like Vysehrad, is also a pentagon. This formal coincidence is amplified in the master plan, to generate an iconic connection between the two structures. Ascending horizontal strata spiral gradually along the periphery of New Vysehrad's pentagon. This ascent climbs from the main entrance of the subway network, below ground, rises into the skyline, and ends with a point towards Vysehrad castle. This connection joins the medieval city both physically and visually with the image of the modern center.
New Vysehrad's peripheral composition is anchored by a central form. This form is located at the convergence of infrastructural, visual and conceptual axes. The infrastructural axis originates from the subway entrance. The visual axis is directed towards the Nusle water tower, and the conceptual axes link above into the existing high-rise towers. Their point of convergence is within a civic structure at the center of the pentagon: the Town Hall, a place for public exhibitions.
Program - Celestial Spirals
The angle of the peripheral spiral has a constant slope and its chronological progression is symbolically relevant. The idealized connection of the medieval city, the Nusle Water tower, the West, and Vysehrad Castle, along the boundary of New Vysehrad, is a testament to the identity of the place. All civic spaces and activities in New Vysehrad take place under this dynamic upper horizon.
For all existing and future high rise buildings which are taller than this spiral, an upper datum is established to mark an absolute height. The upper datum follows the same slope as the peripheral spiral, however, it originates above the Nusle water tower and radiates outwards towards the West. Where this upper level intersects existing towers, fragments of interjected forms combined with a new program are embedded into the towers.
These embedded forms Ð the new horizon - that emanate from the water tower are digitally interconnected, like satellites, to the Town Hall's public exhibition spaces. Their common slope visually directs attention back towards the water tower, while their public program is conceptually anchored within New Vysehrad's Town Hall. This program amplifies the Town Hall's civic role as a connecting point between modern urbanity and historical memory. From the point of view of Prague Castle, New Vysehrad thus appears upon the horizon to express two main relationships: an echoing of Vysehrad castle's massive form, and an indication of the primal influence the Nusle water tower has upon the horizon.
Program - Terrestrial Centers
The correspondence between the horizon at-large and the place in-situ is further articulated through the urban block morphologies. Each corner block of the master plan is its own micro-spiral, and has its own site-specific, central courtyard. Together, the separate urban blocks create both the macro-spiral of the whole site and the polycentric structure of the ground level.
As New Vysehrad on Pankrac Plain could be one of many contemporary urban centers within Prague's panorama, each individual urban block within New Vysehrad's master plan is a local, interstitial center. The centers provide two functions: a particular civic program and an indication of environmental influence. Each of these local centers is structured according to the same logic which defines the master plan: a cohesive periphery and a central form within an interstitial field. The geometries of each interstitial center are twisted in order to direct attention outwards towards their specific, external focus.
The civic programs placed within each particular courtyard; i.e. farmers' market, students' cinema, observation tower and clock, digital library archive, disperse a cultural forum across the whole site. Despite creating a multi-centered local landscape, the collected urban blocks nonetheless support a cohesive environmental whole. The programs, geometrical and formal connections put forward through these centers unite the urban fragments from the 1900's, 1930's, 1960's and 2000's which comprise the surrounding landscape.
Program - Transient Public Space
In contrast to a collection of singular towers, which remain static and autonomous on the horizon, the density of this horizontal proposal can accumulate gradually as necessary, within the established vertical parameters. The total area for each block can thus be subdivided and constructed individually, over time. Throughout the construction process, as built density is accumulating, the idealized urban formation will begin to reveal its form even as individual buildings are being negotiated. Programmed into the urban formation, is a transient public space and a temporal experience of the public landscape.
Mythology
As with the urban strategy of the New Town, New Vysehrad puts into form, multiple meanings of place. Both the New Town and New Vysehrad combine an overarching, conceptual image of the city as a whole, with the nuanced experience of shifting orientations, multiple points of view and overlapping organizational scales. Echoing and interconnecting with surrounding landmarks, the 'new' center of New Vysehrad embodies aspects of the 'already present' within the process of its own formation. It also projects its forms into existing problematic structures, in order to enable their prescribed meanings to become part of a more fluid and specific urban language.
The New Town's formal composition is characterized by a hybrid Renaissance and Gothic mentality: ideal, rational orders were designed to signify meaning, but their actual forms were influenced by accidents. By adapting logic and visual harmony to irregular, preexisting forces, the prescriptive image of architecture is put into question. This technique of mediating rational form, through registering accidental or unanticipated physical impacts within a given place, offers the potential to embed a human and geographical dimension to architectural form as well as an historical and environmental connection to the urban place.
It is all too common to focus on individual changes and individual sites, without considering the context of larger area plans. This limits the appreciation of the broader Historical Urban Landscape. Hybridization is needed not only between form, conception and knowledge of territory and place, but also to connect private and public interests. The example of Prague's New Town as applied to New Vysehrad is taken as a case study to address issues meaningful to the contemporary city of Prague in particular. But the concepts described in this paper assessing the value of reading the historical, geographical and material depth of an urban setting is relevant to any urban place.
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1. The Geological Urban Formation of Central Prague
2. Prague's Medieval New Town 1348: Vision and Settlement
3. The New Town Morphology at Nighttime: Ground and Sky
4. The 21st Century City and the Buffer Zone
5. Situating a New City Center: Existing Material and Background
6. Formal Correspondence: Vysehrad and New Vysehrad
7. New Vysehrad Master Plan
8. New Vysehrad Perspective and Panorama
9. Figure-Ground Plan of Prague: New Vysehrad and Medieval Centers
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