Eyesore of an apartment bloc in Havlíčkův Brod to be torn down

Pre-fabricated apartment blocs known in the Czech Republic as paneláky (panel buildings) were once the Soviet ideal and countless thousands were built in Czechoslovakia from the 1950s until 1989. Now, for the first time, one such bloc of homes will be demolished strictly for aesthetic reasons. The Southeast Bohemian town of Havlíčkův Brod has confirmed that a low-rise smack in the town centre – considered an eyesore for years – will soon be a thing of the past.

Photo: CTK

Ugly, gray, drab: all easily describe paneláky, the pre-fab apartment blocs once considered the height of modernity and design in communist Czechoslovakia. New homes for a brighter future, at least, that’s what inhabitants must have thought. In reality, though, all too often such buildings were poorly-considered and ill-placed, permanently scarring or destroying historic quarters in Czech towns. Like Havlíčkův Brod. Now, twenty-two years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, this town is at least partly trying to turn back the clock, to undo some of the damage done. The apartment building in question is a three-floor structure found only metres away from smaller buildings including a 16th century Renaissance home: a jarring concrete slab that cuts directly through what were previously small historic streets.

Libor Honzárek, a local councilman, says that obviously pre-fab buildings were needed in the past but says no town deserved this.

Photo: CTK

“Pre-fab apartments were the answer in socialist Czechoslovakia. And they weren’t a problem when built on the periphery. But later the dominant idea became to replace the old with the new. To destroy what where considered rotting foundations with something modern for young families. By tearing this building down, it is my hope that Havlíčkův Brod will get back something it lost and inhabitants will once again have reason to take pride in their town.”

The process, of course, was not easy: before it could move forward with any plans the town needed to first secure new apartments for the building’s inhabitants. And some, not surprisingly, complained it was not an easy decision to leave. All the same Libor Honzárek argues the residents came around. The councilman again:

“We saw the problem of moving as a very sensitive one and one that took two or three years to resolve. We had to make a wide range of homes, owned by the town, available for consideration and while, when the time came many were sad to move out, some have since said they are very happy with the homes they got.”

Photo: CTK

The date for the demolition has been set, the die is cast. The building is almost ready, it’s metal to be recycled and panels pulverised. As for the future of the site once the building is gone? Well that hasn’t been determined yet. Revitalisation plans will be commissioned, possibly for a new site that could serve community purposes – the main criteria being that whatever is built, will have to blend in far more tastefully than the building that preceded it.