contemporary glass muzeum

The stately bank halls will get new functions as exhibition areas for large exhibits and a coffee shop for visitors. The basement is dedicated to interactive presentations. The concept of the exhibition areas on the main floors dwells in inserted boxes visitors will walk through to see the exhibited items; these boxes will thus be visually independent of the environment of original historic interiors. In the rear art of the building in Nekázanka, a new tenement house will be built with a two-story high glass workshop for public performances. Offices will be on higher stories of the Na Příkopě Bldg. and shops on the ground floor; a restaurant will have the entrance from Nekázanka. Description of the main building The high-class palace, the former headquarters of Zemská banka (Provincial Bank) is located on the prime location at the corner between the Na Příkopě boulevard and Nekázanka. It was built in two phases between 1894 and 1896; it belongs among the most important built projects of a renowned Czech architect Osvald Polívka. After a fruitful cooperation with architect Antonín Wiehl (Spořitelna královského hl. města Prahy/Insurance House of the Czech Kingdom), Polívka selected the Neo-Renaissance style for the bank palace with lots of references to local Renaissance architecture. Especially, elements appear in the ornamental statuary that naturalised in the Art Nouveau style architecture several years later. An important, for Polívka common attribute, was a refined range of colours in interiors and exteriors. He used mosaics with stone veneer on the prominent front façade; the stucco decorations of the typical lunette cornice and other plastic details are also polychromic. Polívka designed a new building no. 857/II on the opposite corner in Nekázanka at the end of the 1910s, making it a volume well corresponding with the bank. Basic volumetric and layout concept The basement in blocks A and B are cleared of following built-in structures. The layout is freed, and the spatial and functional arrangement is rationalised as needed for exhibitions. New functional areas are arranged in the building – exhibition and retail halls, and a restaurant. Most of technology and storage areas are located in the basement in the rear part of the block B and partly D. The museum entry and public lounges together with a minimalistic coffee and shops face Na Příkopě and Nekázanka on the ground floor of A and B. More shops are in the open area of the former safe vaults. A double-height glass workshop is on the ground floor in the block D. The entry part of the exhibition circuit is designed in the former bank hall on the first floor that will let excel the splendidly decorative interior of the former hall including the monumental staircase. Interiors in the block A will be professionally cleaned or restored. Offices will be preserved in the front part of the block A to Na Příkopě; a new lift is inserted here connecting the ground floor to the fourth floor. There are exhibition areas on the first and second floor. All these levels are connected by an escalator hall; the hall has to be built because the skylight in the lobby in the block B needs to be vertically shifted. Offices are on the fourth to sixth floor (the new purpose of interior areas respects the original functions, too). Our design deals with only a part of the block D – ground floor and first floor. A new escape staircase is inserted on the border between block B and D. The existing service lift in the courtyard is extended up to the fifth floor. Facades Street and inner courtyard historic facades will be restored. The original entrances to shops located on end axes in the front façade to Na Příkopě will be restored and replicated according to period photos and plans. New entrances will be established on both sides of the central entrance, by their articulation and materials not competing with the façade and historic elements, respecting colours, materials, and shapes of all related elements and details. The entry element(s) and building signage are not subject to this design and will be separately discussed and agreed with NPÚ in the following design stages. Entrances to the block D were built in 2014 together with shops facing Nekázanka. The service and car park entry is the old, unchanged one. The shape of inner courtyard facades will remain unaltered. Only the part of the formerly exterior façade in the block B shall be converted into an interior one due to the vertical shift of the skylight. All façade elements and related items will be preserved including windows except two new openings necessary for connecting the escalator lobby and the exhibition areas on the second floor. The extension of the service lift in the courtyard between the block B and D is designed as a clearly recognisable new technical structure regarding materials and shape not competing with the original historic facades or downgrading them.