The Bílá Labut’ department store was built according to the project of architects Josef Kittrich and Josef Hruby in 1939 on the site of a former brewery with an inn called ‘U Bílé Labuti’. With its architectural design and the level of technical design of the building, which was exceptional for its time, it ranked among the most important buildings of Czech functionalism of the 1930s. Among the significant parts of the building is the uniquely generous and modern solution of the glazed street facade – the ‘glazed outer wall’, conceived as a grid for large-scale advertising. An important part of the originally intended effect of the facade of the department store was the impressive solution of night lighting of the facade and the shopfronts in the parterre by illuminating the glazed facade, the arcade of the entrance and the shopfronts as well as the lights of the corporate signage, advertisements and neon.
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Location
- Prague 1
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Realization
- 2016 - 2020
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Project works
- 2016 - 2020
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Cooperation on projects
- Marek Tichý
- Marek Tichý
Since the 1990s, however, the Bílá Labut’ has had to face unprecedented qualitative and quantitative development of commercial space in Prague, especially large commercial complexes in the city centre and its surroundings, which led to a decline in interest in the generous commercial palace and its gradual encroachment by constructions that significantly changed its character. These did not avoid the entrance parts situated towards Na Poříčí Street. The upper part of the façade remained relatively intact, but the parterre and the concrete canopy were very much affected by these additional modifications. These were mainly the temporary replacement of the curved glass in the corners of the windows, the construction of low sliding doors and the modification of the overlight above the doors and windows, and the construction of the external and internal part of the metal lamella ceiling.
In addition, the entire exterior cladding to Na Poříčí Street was in extremely poor technical condition. In particular, the lower part of the lowest window section directly above the porch was very badly affected by the weather conditions, as it was in direct contact with the surface of the porch and therefore with snow in winter. The lower parts of the supporting frame were thus completely corroded, which led to subsequent vertical displacements and deformations of the original supporting frame of the cladding.
The reconstruction of the façade was carried out through detailed photogrammetry, removal of the individual segments, their measurement and the production of a new pre-assembled structure according to the original design. The most challenging part was the proposal, production and installation of the line mask in polished chrome. The research, preparation, production and implementation of the envelope took almost four years, with the reconstruction being completed in late 2019 – early 2020.
A particularly interesting circumstance of the reconstruction was the discovery of the production of special glazing by Thermolux, which had been moved to Switzerland shortly before the war and is still operating there today. This is a very limited production, the production of the glass itself took almost three years, but it ensured an authentic restoration while maintaining the identical character of the glazing, but also continuity of production.
Unlike most interwar buildings, the Bílá Labut’ department store was thermally insulated by means of ‘thermal insulation blocks’ on which square ceramics of black and white colour were applied around the perimeter of the glazed outer wall. Due to the age of the building and its degradation, this part of the façade also needed to be repaired. This was again a rather demanding technique, not only because of the format and colour of the ceramics, which had to be produced atypically for the project, but above all because they were laid on significant, wide joints, filled with a cementitious material with a glass infill (note: the ceramics were made of a glass infill. . Significant for the inter-war architecture was the incredible geometric precision and continuity of the two parts – the lines of the ceramic tiles in the final number of rows without cut-outs and the actual steel glazed wall of the façade. In practice, the installation was thus solved with the help of surveying the individual rows of ceramics and adding the rectification elements to the new supporting structure of the glass part of the cladding.
