What does the future hold for prefabricated ‘panelak’ flat complexes?
More than one third of Czechs still live in panelaks, communist-era prefabricated apartment blocks, which were built across the country from the 1950s to the 1980s. Nowadays, many of them are in urgent need of repair. A conference called Housing Estate, What’s Next, was recently held at the Faculty of Architecture in Prague to address the future of these housing estates. Michal Kohout is one of the architects behind the project:
“The conference is part of a larger project which aims to internationalize the theme and part of the project is supported by the Visegrad fund, because we think that the Central European countries face similar problems in their efforts to cope with these housing estates.”
In what way do the housing estates in the Eastern Europe differ from those in the West?
“Mostly in the scope of what was built. In Western Europe they make up roughly 5 to 10 percent of the housing stock whereas in Central Europe it is about one third of the housing stock and in Eastern Europe it is even more.
“And that accounts for the fact that Central European housing estates usually don’t have social problems. In Western Europe housing estates present a social problem. So in this sense it is different.
“And in the former Eastern Germany there is a completely different problem, because people started moving out, and there is a demographic problem.”
You mean that the population is aging...
“Aging and leaving, mostly. In some cases more than half of the population left these areas and they faced a social problem and technical problem.”
You mean that they don’t know what to do with so many empty buildings?
“Yes, and if you have an infrastructure designed for certain capacities, it is a problem when these design criteria are suddenly not met.”
“I wouldn't say it isn't a problem altogether, but it is definitely not as big and visible a problem as was anticipated. And also the housing estates differ. Some are considered to be better off and some are not doing so well.
“The other thing is that the population is aging and that is a problem. Originally there were only two generations living there, the parents and the children. After some twenty years, the children left and now, because most of the houses are around 30 or 40 years old and the people who originally moved in were in their early thirties, so now the first generation is leaving us.
“The first generation moved in at the same age and shared the same problems, they had very good personal relations between them, and that is a big asset of these housing estates: that the people feel close to each other, but that might change in the coming years.”
So what would you say is the biggest problem the housing estates are facing nowadays?
“I think that the biggest problem is that these housing estates have what we call a very low legibility of the whole environment. And not only in the sense that it is hard to find your way somewhere, but in the sense that people have difficulties interpreting the environment when they want to start a business, when they want to build something.
“In a standard city you know where you should build and where you shouldn't, how high you should build, where to open a pub and where to have an office, because there is a unified way of reading the environment.
“But because these places have a very singular environment, to find a common vision and a common way of reading is in fact much more difficult and it is something that is not obvious. It is something you have to work on and you have to find a common interpretation and a common vision.”
What else do you regard as a serious problem?
“In a traditional city you have individual houses and you can gradually renew them, without changing the identity of the whole place. But here you have an environment where these blocks are built as one structure and you have to rebuild them as one.“
Did you come up with some suggestions, as to what could be done to improve the situation?
And are there examples elsewhere in Western Europe that could be followed here in the Czech Republic?
“Definitely. Because in Western Europe they feel they have a bigger problem so they feel they have to do something about it. The second thing is that they have a longer tradition of doing something with them, mainly because the society is more affluent.
“And the third thing, I would say, is that the discussion about what to do with these houses has been going on since the end of 1970s or beginning of 1980s, so there is a much longer experience with the discussion and with the physical change of the places, which started maybe in the mid-1990s. So there is definitely something to learn, of course bearing in mind that our conditions are slightly different.”
What exactly should we learn from our neighbours in Western Europe?
“I think that one of the messages is that the key to the problem is the public space and the re-interpretation of the public space, which can be done by adding some buildings or just by landscaping.
“But the important outcome is that there could be a clear vision of what is public and what is not. Because also in the housing estates public space occupies some 70 or even 80 percent of the area, whereas in a normal city it is something like 25 to 30 percent.
“And of course that means that the municipality has to take care of a much larger area and it doesn’t have the means to do that. So basically somehow rearranging the place and dividing the area may be the key to solving the problem.”
Do you think demolishing some of the housing estates could be a solution?
“So as much as I wish that these places were never built, I don’t think it’s realistic or even right to take radical action against them. They have become part of our history which we cannot simply get rid of and we need to find a way how to reinterpret them and gradually change them into good places to live in.”
Would you say that the housing estates nowadays are better than the housing estates built throughout the 70s and 80s and that they treat the public space in a better way?
“That’s a good question and I think that we haven't learnt much. Although the new buildings are much better from a technical point of view, I think that as concerns the public spaces, we are continuing to make the same mistakes.
“I think it also has to do with the role of the authorities and the municipalities in the planning process. I think that unfortunately they just took a sort of laissez-faire approach to the new developments and they kind of left it all on the developers, and of course that is not a very clever approach.”
