Transgas (building)

Transgas was a high tech building with brutalist elements in the center of Prague, Czech Republic. It was built in 1978 and demolished in 2019. It consisted of a cubic part, which was dark grey. Its facade was covered by small cobble stones. The other two buildings were high with long windows and steel dark construction. The surrounding decoration is symbolically was out of gas pipeline tubes.

1. History

The building was commissioned by the Czechoslovak government, which agreed in 1970 to build a pipeline and deliver Soviet gas to western Europe. As the pipeline was called Transgas, the same name was given to the building used from 1978 as a control and dispatcher room. The architects and designers where Jiří Eisenreich, Jindřich Malátek, Václav Aulický and Ivo Loos (fountain). It was constructed in the years 1972 to 1978 on the site of apartment houses, which were previously demolished.

1. = Demolition =

In 2015, the complex was bought by Slovak developer group HB Reavis. The group decided to demolish the building and replace it with modern offices. There were attempts by different groups to release it as a cultural monument and they failed. In January 2017, art historians from Czech universities described the building as an exceptional example of brutalist architecture and requested Culture Minister Daniel Herman to prevent its demolition. They wrote, "In the context of Czech architecture of the latter half of the 20th century, it is an exceptional building that creatively follows up the period styles of Western technicism and brutalism." In November 2017 the Czech Ministry of Culture approved the demolition so that a new office complex can be built on the site. Despite many protests and redemption effort from city of Prague, demolition of Transgas started in February 2019.

1. Gallery


1. References

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Battle for Czech Radio

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Prague uprising

The Prague uprising (Czech: Pražské povstání) was a partially successful attempt by the Czech resistance movement to liberate the city of Prague from German occupation in May 1945, during the end of World War II. The preceding six years of occupation had fuelled anti-German sentiment and the rapid advance of Allied forces from the Red Army and the United States Army offered the resistance a chance of success. On 5 May 1945, during the end of World War II in Europe, occupying German forces in Bohemia and Moravia were spontaneously attacked by civilians in an uprising, with Czech resistance leaders emerging from hiding to join them. The Russian Liberation Army (ROA), a collaborationist formation of ethnic Russians, defected and supported the insurgents. German forces counter-attacked, but their progress was slowed by barricades constructed by the insurgents. On 8 May, the Czech and German leaders signed a ceasefire allowing all German forces to withdraw from the city, but some Waffen-SS troops refused to obey. Fighting continued until 9 May, when the Red Army entered the nearly liberated city. The uprising was brutal, with both sides committing several war crimes. German forces used Czech civilians as human shields and perpetrated several massacres. Violence against German civilians, sanctioned by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, continued after the uprising, and was justified as revenge for the occupation or as a means to encourage Germans to flee. George S. Patton's Third United States Army was ordered by Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower not to come to the aid of the Czech insurgents, which undermined the credibility of the Western powers in post-war Czechoslovakia. Instead, the uprising was presented as a symbol of Czech resistance to Nazi rule, and the liberation by the Red Army was used by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia to increase popular support for the party.

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Natural History Museum, Prague

The Natural History Museum (Czech: Přírodovědecké muzeum) is a museum in Prague in the Czech Republic. It is one of the five components of the National Museum and currently consists of eight departments: the Mineralogical and Petrological, Paleontological, Mycological, Botanical, Entomological, Zoological, Anthropological, and the Ringing Station. The Natural History Museum employs over 80 people, and its collections contain more than 15 million objects, of which only a fraction are exhibited. Ivo Macek has been the director of the museum since 2015. The museum's activities fulfill three main tasks: It expands and manages natural history collections and continuously documents nature in the Czech Republic and abroad. It scientifically processes its collections and organizes its own research at the international level. It presents its own collections and scientific activities to the general public through expositions, exhibitions, popular educational publications, lectures, and accompanying programs to expositions and exhibitions. It also involves the public in scientific research through citizen science projects.

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