Hello Prague: The Dancing House Building
If you are an architecture buff like myself, or even if you are not, when in Prague a visit to the Dancing House Building is a must, as there is nothing else quite like it! I also happen to be a long time fan of the Jewish American architect Frank Gehry, who came up with this iconic buildling that is said to represent Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, so a visit was a must, and it was on the way to another location, so why not? I’ll admit, while I love modern architecture, I do not always love modern architecture amidst lovely classic architecture, which is the case here. But what I think is really unimportant, the main take away here is that just as Frank Gehry and his patrons dared to push the boundaries here in Prague, so too should we! Well most of use would never have the opportunity to do it in such a huge public way, but we can certainly do it with our own creative projects, like or starters making the sun a color that is not yellow and grass a color that is not green! Or if you are like me maybe it means hanging plastic bag pom poms in your living room months ahead of a large birthday party, or never taking down the garlands of white pom poms that have been hanging since last December? You get the picture, dare to be different, and don’t worry about what others think, Frank Gehry certainly did not when he designed this building! Okay, lets take a look at it from a few different angles……
According to Wikipedia the building was designed by the Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić in cooperation with Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry. Though this is Gehry’s look, so the project concept was surely his. The Dancing House, designed in 1992 and completed in 1996, was interestingly enough built on a vacant riverfront plot once occupied by a house destroyed by the U.S. bombing of Prague in 1945.
It is not surprise to learn that the non-traditional design of the Dancing House was controversial at the time because the house stands out among the Baroque, Gothic and Art Nouveau buildings for which Prague is famous. The then Czech president, Václav Havel, who lived next to the site for decades, had avidly supported this project, hoping that the building would become a center of cultural activity.
According to Wikipedia: The Dutch insurance company Nationale-Nederlanden (from 1991 till 2016 ING Bank) agreed to sponsor the building of a house on the site. The “superbank” chose Milunić as the lead designer and asked him to partner with another world-renowned architect to approach the process. The French architect Jean Nouvel turned down the idea because of the small square footage, but the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry accepted the invitation. Because of the bank’s excellent financial state at the time, it was able to offer almost unlimited funding for the project. From their first meeting in 1992 in Geneva, Gehry and Milunić began to elaborate Milunić’s original idea of a building consisting of two parts, static and dynamic (“yin and yang”), which were to symbolize the transition of Czechoslovakia from a communist regime to a parliamentary democracy.
Okay friends, I hope you’ve enjoyed this look at modern architecture in the amazing city of Prague!
