From housing estate to city? Karviná and the plans for a new centre in the Karviná-Hranice housing estate post-1989

290 SCIENTIFIC STUDY VEDECKÁ ŠTÚDIA PERSPECTIVE DRAWING OF THE COMPETITION DESIGN FROM 1993–1994 2ND INCREASED PRIZE FOR ING. ARCH. BRONISLAV KŘEN AND ING. ARCH. PAVEL PULKRT PERSPEKTIVA SOUTĚŽNÍHO NÁVRHU 1993–1994 2. ZVÝŠENÁ CENA ING. ARCH. BRONISLAV KŘEN A ING. ARCH. PAVEL PULKRT Source Zdroj: archive of the Division of Urban Planning and the Construction Board of the Karviná Municipal Authority 291A&U 3 – 4 / 2023 From Housing Estate to City? Karviná and the Plans for a New Centre in the Karviná-Hranice Housing Estate Post-1989 Ze sídliště město? Karviná a plány na nové centrum sídliště Karviná-Hranice po roce 1989 Eva Špačková 10.31577/archandurb.2023.57.3-4.8 Město Karviná hrálo vbudovatelských plánech po roce 1948 roli jednoho ze satelitních hornických měst na Ostravsku vblízkosti plánované ačástečně postavené Nové Ostravy. Nová Karviná jako jedno znaplánovaných socialistických měst prožila svoje období růstu, kdy se vize rozvoje těžby uhlí aocelářství vregionu jevila jako nekonečný úspěšný příběh stejně jako budování socialismu. Optimistická vize budoucnosti ale už v80. letech 20. století začala ztrácet na akceleraci, aby pak vrelativně krátkém období po roce 1989 došlo vcelé oblasti kútlumu těžby aredukci na ni navázaného těžkého průmyslu. Vpočátku 90. let 20. století stálo město Karviná před otázkou, jak se nový hospodářský systém promítne do prostředí města aovlivní jeho rozvoj. Příkladem těchto úvah ajejich odrazu vpraktickém plánování arozhodování je záměr řešení centra vsídlišti Karviná-Hranice, který je zároveň ilustrací proměn vpřemýšlení urbanistů aarchitektů ivpraktickém plánování města. Dobovou představu orozvoji soukromého podnikání apodobě prostředí, které by pro ně mělo být vytvořeno, ilustruje vývoj záměru zástavby pro neobsazenou plochu určenou pro občanskou vybavenost vbezprostřední blízkosti sídliště Hranice. Na řešení obchodního centra Karviná-Hranice byly vprvní polovině 90. let 20. století vypsány dvě urbanisticko-architektonické soutěže. Architekti jako autoři soutěžních návrhů inavazující urbanistické studie vycházeli zdobového kritického vztahu ksídlištím, jejich urbanismu, veřejnému prostoru, anakonec ikpodobě panelových obytných domů, sdíleného mezi architekty iveřejností. Diskuze se na přelomu 80. a90. let vedla opotřebě vrátit do prostředí sídliště prvky tradičního města, obnovit hierarchii prostorů, klasické ulice anáměstí. Zároveň architekti debatovali okomunikační čitelnosti staveb aprostředí apotřebě větší pestrosti výrazových prostředků architektury ovlivněných nepochybně postmodernismem. Místo na okraji sídliště Hranice mělo být přetvořeno na nové centrum sídliště, kde byly vnávrzích uplatněny dobové představy oměstskosti aměstotvornosti. Přestože soutěžní návrh vybraný kdalšímu rozpracování dokládal možnost etapizace při výstavbě, nenašel se žádný investor, který by se do takto koncipovaného projektu pustil abulvár anáměstí skutečně postavil. Prakticky vyrostlo centrum zcela jiného typu. Postmoderní představu otradičním městě nahradila utilitární budova supermarketu obchodního řetězce postavená na místě plánovaného centra vroce 1998 fakticky bez urbanistických vazeb vyšší úrovně ve vztahu kokolí. Nenaplněné předpoklady, změny aúpravy vjednotlivých etapách plánovacího procesu nakonec zcela změnily původně zamýšlený výsledek. Obyvatelé sídliště absenci městsky působícího centra nepovažují za významný nedostatek prostředí, ve kterém žijí. Původní centrum sídliště zůstalo vurčité míře stále funkční. Nové centrum, které představuje supermarket, funguje jako obchodní centrum podle současných zvyklostí. Díky tlaku na naplnění postmoderní představy onáměstí abulváru sdominantou kostela unikly možná důležitější požadavky na novou stavbu – důsledná vazba na strukturu sídliště, kultivované okolí sdůrazem na pěší návštěvníky, možnost komunitní funkce aaktivního parteru budovy avneposlední řadě architektonické řešení samotné budovy, jejíž podoba naplňuje pouze základní potřebu nákupů vkrytém prostoru bez ambice vytvořit cokoliv nad tuto holou funkčnost. 292 SCIENTIFIC STUDY VEDECKÁ ŠTÚDIA Introduction The city of Karviná, in the socialist building plans after 1948, played the role of one of several satellite mining towns in the Ostrava region near the planned and partially built New Ostrava1. More than eighty years later, it can be concluded that the grand plans for the region were only partially realised. Not only did the historic centre of Ostrava not disappear through undermining, but New Ostrava was assumed into the city as the present district of Ostrava-Poruba. Similar to other mining towns in the vicinity of Ostrava (Havířov, Bohumín, Orlová), Nová Karviná, as one of the planned socialist cities, experienced its own era of growth when the vision of coal mining and steel development seemed to have an endless future of success—as with the building of socialism. However, the optimistic vision of the 'steel heart of the nation' began to lose its momentum in the 1980s, followed by asignificant decline in mining and areduction in related heavy industry throughout the area in the relatively short period after 1989. In the Ostrava and Karviná area, the trajectory of rapid rise and subsequent decline in the economic and social sectors took place over ahistorically short period, reflected even now in the image of the settlements and the landscape. The fate of the entire Moravian-Silesian part of the Upper Silesian coal basin is visible in its geographic arrangements. Present-day Karviná2 was created in the 1940s through an artificial combination of several originally separate historical villages and other newly planned urban sections. Karviná was originally avillage to the west of the town of Fryštát, which only gained importance at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries with the development of coal mining. Mining activities were also acause of the gradual physical disappearance of the original village in the 1970s and 1980s. However, the name Karviná became the designation for an entire newly planned town. The historical centre of today’scity is the original Fryštát, with the other parts of the current city singled out in its cadastral area (Nové Město, Mizerov, Hranice). Hence Frýštát, amedieval royal town designated as such at the end of the 13th century, became New Karviná, an artificially created, fast-growing settlement for miners working in the surrounding mines. In 1946–1947 Professor Liebscher from the Technical University in Brno was commissioned to develop aregulation plan for New Karviná3 for apopulation of 50,000. Intensive construction work began after 1948. After the communist putsch, housing construction had to be provided to replace housing in disappearing villages and mining settlements in and around the undermined area, and to provide housing for the newly arriving miners and builders of heavy industry. The start of the construction of New Karviná is represented by the edge of the city once known as Stalingrad, dating 1947, in the initial phase using aconstruction scheme based on functionalism. The southern part of Stalingrad, built in the 1950s (since 1971 called Nové Město), already displays the typical form influenced by the period of socialist realism along the central Liberation Avenue (třída Osvobození). The new zoning plan of Karviná was elaborated by architect Vladimír Meduna in 1954–1955, then after 1955 by architect Rudolf Spáčil, with the plan being completed at the end of 1956. Between the 1960s–1980s, new construction shifted to the east of the historical centre of Fryštát. From the 1960s onwards, the housing estates of Ráj (designed by Ing. arch. Jiří Klen, Regional ZONING PLAN FOR NOVÁ OSTRAVA WITH INDICATION OF THE OSTRAVA SATELLITE SETTLEMENTS KARVINÁ AND HAVÍŘOV, VLADIMÍR MEDUNA, RUDOLF SPÁČIL, MILOSLAV ČTVRTNÍČEK 1950–1951 ÚZEMNÍ PLÁN NOVÉ OSTRAVY S VYZNAČENÍM OSTRAVSKÝCH SATELITŮ KARVINÁ A HAVÍŘOV, VLADIMÍR MEDUNA, RUDOLF SPÁČIL, MILOSLAV ČTVRTNÍČEK 1950–1951 Source Zdroj: Architektura ČSR, 10, 1951, p. 261 293A&U 3 – 4 / 2023 Planning Bureau Ostrava, Prague, 1956) and Mizerov (designed by Ing. arch. Oldřich Pražák, Regional Planning Bureau Ostrava, 1958) were built. In 1962, the architect Zoja Wallerová designed the third, large-scale prefabricated housing estate Hranice.4 In addition to these three housing estates, apartment buildings were built in various parts of the city, either as single blocks or in smaller units, until 1989 exclusively using prefab construction technology. To this day, the majority of Karviná’spopulation still lives in prefabricated blocks of flats on the housing estates. The city of Karviná contains all the examples of urbanism and residential-unit architecture that emerged and changed after 1945: from the functionalism-influenced post-war blocks of flats through the socialist new town of Stalingrad, modelled on socialist realism, after which modernist urban planning of housing estates returned and practically influenced the shape of the city until the change of the social and economic system after 1989. In the contemporary Czech Republic, the city of Karviná5 is an example of how the meaning of asettlement changes over time, from economic and social ascent to aperiod of declining attractiveness. The development of the city is continuously influenced by individual interventions, both planned and accidental, which can estimate and predict future developments only to acertain extent. Nevertheless, over the long term they establish and influence the urban and architectural design of the environment in which the city lives and functions in the years to come. We can observe this development in detail through one example of partial development of an area in the Karviná-Hranice housing estate. If we examine the plans, the individual steps, and their implementation over the years, we can describe and assess how the ideas and plans of the time encountered reality and changed, both at individual moments and over alonger period of time. Karviná-Hranice Housing Estate: A New Centre for a Modernist Housing Estate: Boulevard, Square, or Church? In the early 1990s, the city of Karviná was confronted with the question of how the new economic system would be reflected in the city’senvironment and how it would influence its development. An example of these considerations and their reflection in practical planning and decision-making DETAILED ZONING PLAN FOR KARVINÁ-HRANICE SEVER (NORTH), ZOJA WALLEROVÁ, REGIONAL HERITAGE INSTITUTE OSTRAVA 1962 PODROBNÝ ÚZEMNÍ PLÁN KARVINÁ-HRANICE SEVER, ZOJA WALLEROVÁ, KPÚ OSTRAVA 1962 Source Zdroj: Historie územního plánování statutárního města Karviné, 2008, p. 20 294 SCIENTIFIC STUDY VEDECKÁ ŠTÚDIA is the design of the centre in the Karviná-Hranice housing estate, which also illustrates the changes in the thinking of urban planners and architects as much as the practice of urban planning. The Karviná-Hranice housing estate is the most recent such unit built in post-war Karviná. The development of the location for residential purposes was part of the Karviná-Hranice Detailed Zoning Plan of 1962. At this time, architects were no longer restrained by the morphology of 1950s socialist historicism, while the requirements for density (number of inhabitants per hectare) and the limitations on the architectural expression of the buildings imposed by prefabrication and panel technology determined the boundaries within which the authors of the housing estate could operate. Yet it is impossible to speak of architects as incapable of seeking ways to respond to international trends within these limits. To place the urbanism of the Karviná-Hranice housing estate in acontemporary context, we could look for inspiration to Le Corbusier’s“shining cities” with their idea of large residential buildings freely set in park green space.6 Historical examples of similar housing estates can be found, for example, in Finland, the most famous being Tapiola near Helsinki. The Finnish architecture of mass housing with its emphasis on the integration of homes into the natural environment and its social aspect was afrequent model for Czechoslovak architects from the 1960s onwards. Architect Viktor Rudiš cites Tapiola as asource of inspiration for the award-winning Brno-Lesná housing estate.7 From the available archival documentation8, it can be deduced that the concept of the Hranice housing estate was based on afree composition of slab apartment buildings forming individual volumes arranged in green space. Transport services for the housing estate were provided by aring road offering accesses to apartment buildings, yet the inner areas of the estate remained quiet, without car traffic. The estate included civic amenities, primarily schools and kindergartens. Clearly marking the central area of the estate was the Permon shopping centre, linked to the area of aplanned central park. This centre was complemented by two other smaller commercial buildings in other parts of the estate. PERSPECTIVE DRAWING OF THE COMPETITION DESIGN FROM 1992–1993 ING. ARCH. DAGMAR SAKTOROVÁ AND ING. ARCH. IGOR SAKTOR PERSPEKTIVA SOUTĚŽNÍHO NÁVRHU 1992–1993 ING. ARCH. DAGMAR SAKTOROVÁ A ING. ARCH. IGOR SAKTOR Source Zdroj: archive of the Division of Urban Planning and the Construction Board of the Karviná Municipal Authority MODEL OF THE COMPETITION DESIGN FROM 1992–1993 ING. ARCH. DAGMAR SAKTOROVÁ AND ING. ARCH. IGOR SAKTOR MODEL SOUTĚŽNÍHO NÁVRHU 1992–1993 ING. ARCH. DAGMAR SAKTOROVÁ A ING. ARCH. IGOR SAKTOR Source Zdroj: archive of the Division of Urban Planning and the Construction Board of the Karviná Municipal Authority 295A&U 3 – 4 / 2023 After 1989, as in other parts of the country, the Hranice housing estate saw its original civic amenities first passed into private hands in what was termed ‘small-scale privatisation’9, when individual shops and commercial premises were sold, not the buildings as awhole. Later, privatisation of flats followed, but this was done by selling individual flat entrances to housing cooperatives or owners’ associations.10 In Karviná, the process of privatisation of flats came later than in other cities, with the city administration deciding in favour of asignificant privatisation of the housing stock only in 2009. Plans for the Use of Undeveloped Areas: Will the Karviná-Hranice Housing Estate Develop into a City? In the early 1990s, the city of Karviná commissioned astudy of sites suitable for private enterprise.11 One of the selected locations was avacant plot in the Hranice housing estate at the tip of the area near today’sroundabout (intersection of Leonovova and Žižkova Streets). In the original plans of the estate, this area was always designated as green space in connection with the Dubina Forest Park and the city cemetery southeast of Žižkova Street. In the zoning plan effective in 1977–198512, this area, originally used as aclay pit, was listed as “areas of municipal production and services, technical facilities and warehouses”. The subsequent zoning plan approved on 3 October 198913 already classifies this area as “basic and higher developed civic amenities”, hence we can conclude that the change of use of the area and its designation for civic amenities is an idea dating from the period before the regime change in 1989. In fact, the area remained empty and undeveloped until the early 1990s, while the original use as the clay pit has long since disappeared. In July 1992, the Karviná Municipal Authority, Department of Urban Planning, Architecture and Environment, announced an urban planning and architectural competition for the design of ashopping centre in Karviná-Hranice developed for avacant area intended for civic amenities, situated in the immediate vicinity of the Hranice housing estate with good transport accessibility. SITE PLAN OF THE COMPETITION DESIGN FROM 1992–1993 ING. ARCH. BRONISLAV KŘEN AND ING. ARCH. PAVEL PULKRT SITUACE SOUTĚŽNÍHO NÁVRHU 1992–1993 ING. ARCH. BRONISLAV KŘEN A ING. ARCH. PAVEL PULKRT Source Zdroj: archive of the Division of Urban Planning and the Construction Board of the Karviná Municipal Authority 296 SCIENTIFIC STUDY VEDECKÁ ŠTÚDIA The competition conditions14 of the first urban planning and architectural competition from July 1992 specified the design of the shopping centre in connection with the zoning plan determining the function of the area as basic and higher civic amenities and in connection with the studies of the use of sites for private enterprise. In the context of the idea of private business development of that time, assuming the form of various shops and services lacking in the housing estate, the competition conditions were specified as follows: • shopping centre (department store) • office building with a street-level floor used for commercial amenities and services • hotel, incl. restaurant • religious building (church) • parking and rest areas No capacities of the required functions were specified in the assignment. The intent of the competition was “to gather ideas for the most socially, technically and economically efficient design and implementation of the completion of this residential complex”. The results were to be used “to determine regulation in the area and to call for investor tenders for individual buildings”. One criterion for proposal evaluation was to be “abalanced urban, architectural, and technical solution..., enabling the gradual completion of the planned civic amenities”.15 Only two designs were submitted to the competition, the authors of which were Ing. arch. Dagmar Saktorová and Ing. arch. Igor Saktor (title: Plazza), and Ing. arch. Bronislav Křen and Ing. arch. Pavel Pulkrt (title: Protinov). In the final report16, the jury evaluated the quality of both designs as mediocre and issued only partial awards. Concluding that the result of the competition could not be used to determine the regulation in the area, the jury recommended organising asecond round and specified the requirements for the proposals (use of city-forming elements – streets, squares, green space, street-level floor, expression of wider connections to the housing estate and the city, traffic solution).17 In the reports, both authors of the competition proposals characterised the environment of the housing estate as not very legible and lacking in urban elements, hence they declared their efforts SITE PLAN OF THE COMPETITION DESIGN FROM 1993–1994 2ND INCREASED PRIZE FOR ING. ARCH. BRONISLAV KŘEN AND ING. ARCH. PAVEL PULKRT SITUACE SOUTĚŽNÍHO NÁVRHU 1993–1994 2. ZVÝŠENÁ CENA ING. ARCH. BRONISLAV KŘEN A ING. ARCH. PAVEL PULKRT Source Zdroj: archive of the Division of Urban Planning and the Construction Board of the Karviná Municipal Authority 297A&U 3 – 4 / 2023 SITE CONTEXT MAP OF THE COMPETITION DESIGN FROM 1993–1994 3RD PRIZE FOR ING. ARCH. DAGMAR SAKTOROVÁ, ING. ARCH. IGOR SAKTOR MAPA ŠIRŠÍCH VZTAHŮ SOUTĚŽNÍHO NÁVRHU 1993–1994 3. CENA ING. ARCH. DAGMAR SAKTOROVÁ, ING. ARCH. IGOR SAKTOR Source Zdroj: archive of the Division of Urban Planning and the Construction Board of the Karviná Municipal Authority PERSPECTIVE DRAWING OF THE COMPETITION DESIGN FROM 1993–1994 3RD PRIZE FOR ING. ARCH. DAGMAR SAKTOROVÁ, ING. ARCH. IGOR SAKTOR PERSPEKTIVA SOUTĚŽNÍHO NÁVRHU 1993–1994 3. CENA ING. ARCH. DAGMAR SAKTOROVÁ, ING. ARCH. IGOR SAKTOR Source Zdroj: archive of the Division of Urban Planning and the Construction Board of the Karviná Municipal Authority 298 SCIENTIFIC STUDY VEDECKÁ ŠTÚDIA for an urban organisation of the assigned area by means of astreet and asquare. Links to the actual routes in the estate and the existing Permon shopping centre are not specified in the design proposals. In the authors’ report on the design proposal entitled Plazza, it is literally stated that “the basic and leading idea is to try to create astructured urban space at least within the given area, which would represent an enclave of conceptually organised buildings and open spaces and could in the future become aseed for further continuation of urban-type buildings of greater importance in the vicinity”. The authors of the design proposal entitled Protinov state in the report that their solution seeks “neither anon-existent architectural trace, nor does it seek continuity of the site with the surrounding buildings”. In their proposal, the architects create “new urban spaces from which further regulation in the area should be prospectively derived”.18 In both proposals, the authors tried to insert into the environment of the housing estate amodernist free composition of individual buildings located in green space, asolution that they consciously accentuated as different, defining itself against the existing state through the use of traditional urban compositional elements in the form of asquare (Plazza) and acity street, i.e., aboulevard opening into aspace organised as an urban block (Protinov). SITE PLAN OF THE COMPETITION DESIGN FROM 1993–1994 2ND INCREASED PRIZE FOR ING. ARCH. LADISLAV MIRT AND COLLECTIVE SITUACE SOUTĚŽNÍHO NÁVRHU 1993–1994 2. ZVÝŠENÁ CENA ING. ARCH. LADISLAV MIRT A KOLEKTIV Source Zdroj: archive of the Division of Urban Planning and the Construction Board of the Karviná Municipal Authority URBAN ZONING PLAN – LOCAL CENTRE IN KARVINÁ-HRANICE 1996, ING. MARIÁN KOHAN, ING. ARCH. BRONISLAV KŘEN, ING. ARCH. PAVEL PULKRT, ING. ARCH. LADISLAV MIRT SITUACE SOUTĚŽNÍHO NÁVRHU ÚZEMNÍ PLÁN ZÓNY – LOKÁLNÍ CENTRUM KARVINÁ-HRANICE 1996, ING. MARIÁN KOHAN, ING. ARCH. BRONISLAV KŘEN, ING. ARCH. PAVEL PULKRT, ING. ARCH. LADISLAV MIRT Source Zdroj: archive of the Division of Urban Planning and the Construction Board of the Karviná Municipal Authority 305A&U 3 – 4 / 2023 1 New Ostrava represented the plan for the construction of anew socialist city on land not threatened with undermining, and at the same time an architectural and urbanistic demonstration of the propaganda of the Czechoslovak communist regime. For more details see STRAKOŠ, Martin. 2010. New Ostrava and Its Satellites. Chapters from the History of Architecture of the 1930s–1950s. Ostrava: National Heritage Institute, territorial expert workplace in Ostrava, 199 p. 2 KUČA, Karel. 1997. Města aměstečka vČechách, na Moravě ave Slezsku. Volume II. Prague: Libri, from p. 819. 3 KRUPKOVÁ, Libuše and KUFA, Miroslav. 2008. Historie územního plánování statutárního města Karviné. Karviná: Odbor územního plánování astavebního řádu Magistrátu města Karviné, p. 3. (+medzera medzi p. a3. 4 Krupková, L. and Kufa M., 2008, p. 20. 5 The original historical Karviná, the undermined area of which now bears the name Doly (Mines), is atypical post-mining landscape influenced by the development and subsequent decline and closure of mining activities. The formerly built-up area has been completely transformed: the original town has disappeared, commemorated today only by the Church of St. Peter of Alcantara, standing alone in adesolate overgrown area of the former town. The church has subsided by 32 metres and has tilted considerably due to mining activity. Known as the Leaning Church is revisited in the broader cultural context in Karin Lednická’sbook of the same name, Šikmý kostel (The Leaning Church: AFictional Chronicle of aLost City). The church continues to hold services on aregular basis every Sunday and has become alocal tourist attraction. 6 ŠVÁCHA, Rostislav. 1989. Le Corbusier. Prague: Odeon, pp. 34, 39, 79. According to Rostislav Švácha, in his 1935 book La Ville Radieuse, Le Corbusier writes about “three essential joys” of our meditative life, which include plenty of greenery, air and sunshine. 7 RUDIŠ, Viktor. 2012. Ósaka and Lesná. In: Peřinková, M. Architektura aurbanismus 2. poloviny 20. století. Prague: Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Technology − Technical University of Ostrava published by Gasset, pp. 16–19; RUDIŠ, Viktor. 2005. Viktor Rudiš: stavby aprojekty 1953–2002. Brno: Council House, pp. 13–22. 8 Detailed Zoning Plan for Karviná-Hranice /North/, Ing. arch. Zoja Wallerová 1962, approved by the Karviná Regional Council in 1963. 9 Act no. 427/1990 Coll., on Transfers of State Ownership of Certain Property to Other Legal or Natural Persons. Retail and service establishments were transferred from state ownership into the hands of non-state entities through auctions; the process took place between 1991–1993. 10 Act no. 72/1994 Coll., regulating certain co-ownership relationships to buildings and certain ownership relationships to flats and non-residential premises and supplementing certain acts (Act on Flat Ownership). 11 Selection of sites for private businesses – permanent buildings Karviná – stage Iand II, Linea Architectural Studio, Ing. arch. V. Plesník and Ing. arch. M. Kučerová. 12 Zoning master plan of the Karviná agglomeration prepared in 1975, Ing. arch. Koval. 13 Zoning plan of the Karviná settlement unit prepared in 1985–1988, Ing. arch. Jana Šimíčková. 14 Competition conditions for the urban planning and architectural competition for the design of the Karviná-Hranice shopping centre, July 1992, prepared by the Division of Urban Planning and Architecture operated under the Department of Urban Planning, Architecture and Environment of the Karviná Municipal Authority. 15 As in 14. 16 The evaluation of the competition took place in January 1993. 17 Report for the 37th meeting of the Karviná Municipal Authority council dated 27 January 1993. 18 Cited from the authors’ reports on the competition design proposals. 19 Conditions of the shortlisted conceptual urban planning and architectural competition “Urban development solution of the local centre of Karviná-Hranice”, October 1993. In the competition conditions, the following persons are listed among the invited participants. Ing. arch. Igor Saktor, Ing. arch. Dagmar Saktorová, Ing. arch. Bronislav Křen, Ing. arch. Pavel Pulkrt, Ing. arch. Ladislav Mirt, the representative proposed by the Ostrava Architects’ Association (no name listed), arepresentative of the Roman Catholic Church (no name listed). 20 The evaluation of the competition took place in March 1994. 21 Final protocol of the shortlisted architectural and urban planning competition for the conceptual design of the local centre of Karviná-Hranice housing estate dated 24 March 1994. 22 Urban development study for Karviná-Hranice centre, October 1994. 23 The planned square at this site has not yet been completed and only an open grassy area remains. 24 Attention was paid to the topic of Czechoslovak housing in prefabricated buildings and its inclusion in the development of architecture by the American researcher Kimberly Zarecor in her publication, also available in Czech. ZARECOR, Kimberly Elman. 2011. Manufacturing aSocialist Modernity: Housing in Czechoslovakia, 1945–1960. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Between 2013–2017, the Paneláci project dealt with prefabricated housing estates in the Czech Republic, and the research was widely presented and published in several books of the same title accompanying the exhibitions: in English SKŘIVÁNKOVÁ, Lucie, ŠVÁCHA, Rostislav and LEHKOŽIVOVÁ, Irena (eds.). 2017. The Paneláks. Twenty-Five Housing Estates in the Czech Lands. Prague: Museum of Applied Arts, 284 p.; SKŘIVÁNKOVÁ, Lucie, ŠVÁCHA, Rostislav, KOUKALOVÁ, Martina and NOVOTNÁ, Eva (eds.). 2017. Paneláci 2. Historie sídlišť včeských zemích 1945–1989 [Paneláks 2. History of Housing Estates in the Czech Lands 1945–1989]. Prague: Museum of Applied Arts, 352 p. 25 Since the form of common Czech architecture and urbanism from the early 1990s has not yet received systematic attention from theorists, acomprehensive view and expert discussion of this stage of development is still lacking - even though many places in Czech settlements were influenced by this period for along time. 26 Osmistovka and Šestka are local names in the part of Karviná-Nové Město (originally the Stalingrad housing estate) with urbanism and architecture in the style of socialist realism, but even this appearance of housing estate has not prevented this part of the city from becoming one of the most problematic localities of Karviná. 27 The gradual changes in Czech architecture of the 1980s were discussed by aresearch team from the Czech Technical University in the publication: VORLÍK, Petr (ed.). 2019. (A)typ. Architektura osmdesátých let. Prague: ČVUT. DOC. ING. ARCH. EVA ŠPAČKOVÁ, PH.D. VSB – TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF OSTRAVA FACULTY OF CIVIL ENGINEERING, DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE Ludvíka Podéště 1875/17 708 00 Ostrava-Poruba Czech Republic [email protected] hypermarket, functions as ashopping centre according to current practices. The pressure to fulfil the post-modern idea of asquare and boulevard dominated by achurch perhaps missed the more important requirements for anew element – aconsistent link to the estate structure, acultivated environment with an emphasis on pedestrian visitors, the possibility of acommunity function and an active street-floor level of the building. No less significant is the architectural solution of the actual building, whose form only fulfils the basic need for indoor shopping without any ambition to create anything beyond this bare functionality. The history of the plans and strategies that have arisen and perished in one city and its housing estates over the decades illustrates aconstant change. The development of the sub-area in the prefabricated Hranice housing estate in Karviná represents an evolution of opinions on the desired form of the urban environment and its gradual changes over time in aspecific area. The example of this transformation and its reflection in practical use and planning is also an illustration of the thinking of urban planners and architects as well as the practical policy and decision-making of the municipality’sadministration during the period of system change in the Czech Republic in the 1990s in the context of the development of society in economic, political, and cultural terms.