2024-06-26 05:36:12
On Prague’s Národní třída, after two years, the renovated Máj opens. The previous purchasing heart has been reworked right into a enjoyable home that can supply over 200 video games for kids and youngsters, bars for fogeys and a restaurant with a view. The authors of the extravagant transformation are the homeowners, the Klán brothers, and architect Milan Mlada from the AGE undertaking workplace. “We did our greatest to make the home not like a grey mouse,” he says in an interview.
We’re sitting collectively at a time when the general public has not but absolutely seen the brand new interiors of the Máj division retailer. What reactions do you count on?
I feel that some folks will probably be shocked by the inside, fairly presumably it is not going to be flattering for them. However that is the aim of that area. We intentionally wished to create a stir as a result of this home is all about feelings. This has each constructive and unfavourable implications.
So you will not be shocked that the primary printed photographs of the inside earned nicknames on social networks, similar to Disneyland, Russian citadel or Las Vegas…
It would not offend us, we’re glad for it. If somebody compares us to Disneyland or Las Vegas, it is a praise.
Opening of the renovated division retailer Could. | Picture: Jakub Plíhal
And “Russian citadel”… is {that a} praise for you too?
That’s the query in what sense it’s meant. There will probably be many various nicknames. It’s important for us that it arouses passions and feelings. Our intention was to create a distinction. Rwe questioned what would go properly with such a constructing with a touch of high-tech structure and the way we might differentiate ourselves from the competitors. We got here to the conclusion – and we had various conservative strategies – that this could possibly be an attention-grabbing risk that nobody right here has tried but.
After all, there are additionally those that help the interiors and idea of the leisure home. They declare it’s a option to entice folks to the cultural monument.
Somebody as soon as stated, and I utterly agree with that, that the architects designed the Máj division retailer as a instrument that ought to adapt to folks’s present wants. It was not a church, it was a division retailer – now a home of leisure, whose goal, because it was fifty years in the past, is to be for the folks. Could handed away earlier than the change of proprietor. For a very long time, Tesco didn’t know what to do with him. In 2006, she wished to demolish it, which led to a debate in regards to the values of Maja and its declaration as a cultural monument. We establish with these values, however we had to determine how one can cope with that object. In our opinion, the unique perform of the home would now not work commercially. The way in which of purchasing has modified. Nobody needs to buy on greater flooring anymore. That is only a truth.
Trendy department shops, aside from the Palladium, which is particular, have two, at most three flooring. We have now 9 of them. We additionally thought of administration and housing. However the person tracts of the constructing have huge dimensions, it might be troublesome for us to get mild into them. Lastly, the thought of a enjoyable home got here up and all of us agreed that there is no such thing as a such factor within the heart of Prague. We needed to reorient ourselves and begin on the lookout for inspiration overseas. As a result of in reality – and now I do not need to offend anybody – however nobody could make an excellent leisure heart within the Czech Republic. That is why Disneyland is a praise to us. It’s a business product that works.
You registered the assertion of the deputy for regional improvement, Petr Hlaváček, who wrote on the X community that “the inside of Mája, it appears, will probably be utterly destroyed by insensitive reconstruction.” On the identical time, he locations the largest blame on the preservationists for “grossly underestimating the safety of the interiors”. I used to be questioning should you had any restrictions from the municipality’s historic preservation division when designing the brand new interiors?
As a part of long-term discussions with preservationists, we’ve clearly outlined the chances of what’s and isn’t doable. What has that worth and what would not. Truly, because of the earlier reconstruction, there weren’t too lots of these values inside. We needed to maintain stairs, escalators or handrails. The help system can also be authentic, but it surely has been modified someplace to adjust to current rules. We tried to protect it in such a means that it might final for one more x variety of many years, it doesn’t matter what occurs right here. And that, in our opinion, was, as I already talked about, the primary precept of the division retailer. A business matter modifications with folks’s style, very similar to vogue.
In different phrases, are you saying that the inside type as it’s at the moment in Could displays the present style of the folks?
I do not imply style. We don’t converse to folks’s tastes. Everybody has it in a different way. This can be a business plan that we consider will probably be profitable out there. As a result of it attracts consideration. Individuals will need to see it right here. And if that mannequin stops working for us, the inside will change once more. It is like furnishings. While you cease liking the kitchen unit, you exchange it. I actually have lived via the period when everybody wished white, shiny kitchens. Then wooden and black fittings. As such, structure displays a life-style. And at the moment we nonetheless have him on social networks. What fails on them just isn’t a working business product. If the social scenario modifications and other people get fed up with surprising interiors, we will do a extra reasonable type once more. We may make a pleasant, modern design that’s usually accepted by the general public, however there are already sufficient such realizations in the marketplace. And if there are lots of them, it can’t be commercially profitable.
Did the still-living authors of the division retailer, architects Martin Rajniš and Johnny Eisler, make any calls for on you?
The dialogue with them was primarily based mostly on the home as such.
So not about what’s inside, if I perceive accurately?
Precisely. We requested what’s de facto their writer’s work. It was, for instance, some sort of stair markings, graphics – however these haven’t survived. There have been some locksmith parts that we both preserved or had an actual duplicate of. The purpose was to even barely enhance what the craftsmanship of the time couldn’t do at such a degree. For instance, at the moment we’re in a position to make sure technological connections somewhat higher, in order that the visible is extra much like how the authors initially imagined it, however after all they had been restricted by the manufacturing prospects. We additionally mentioned with the preservationists that the authors wished some parts on the constructing in a different way than they lastly realized. However Máj declares itself a monument within the state during which it’s. Because of this even when the authors initially thought that some issues can be totally different sooner or later, in actuality the precise state is already protected.
Are you able to be extra particular about what the architects envisioned right here in a different way?
For instance, a doable completion between us and Quadrio. On the fifth ground there may be an illogical hole with a major discount. It made sense again then, Máj lowered itself to the ledges of the unique historic buildings in Spálená Road. Earlier than the development of the subway, the previous buildings had been torn down and Quadrio was later constructed of their place. Initially, the design known as for yet another degree of parking to be created on the degree of the fifth ground, which was by no means carried out, but it surely was within the design. However nobody from the preservation division took this into consideration, as a result of they think about the true state of the constructing to be a cultural monument.
The opening of the reconstructed Máj division retailer, within the image the architect of the reconstruction, architect Milan Mlada. | Picture: Jakub Plíhal
You had been primarily impressed by the content material and magnificence of the home overseas, the place precisely?
There was an entire vary of inspiration, if I had been to divide it typologically, one supply for us was European capitals from Lisbon and Barcelona to Munich and Frankfurt to London. We have centered on one of the best working companies on the market – like a darts and pool bar or a well-functioning restaurant. We watched how it’s conceptually performed there. What works or would not work, one has to expertise, not learn it from a ledger. However to be trustworthy, we had been additionally right here in Prague to observe.
For instance?
We went round all of the gadgets which might be much like us by way of operation, and we additionally obtained inspiration someplace. I feel that what works is price repeating or transferring on. The second supply was amusement parks basically. We wished a facility the place folks would go, that’s, while you talked about Disneyland, I’d add Playmobil and Las Vegas for me personally as properly, Though after all it is strictly casino-type there. We had been additionally within the on line casino in Rozvadovo. We primarily noticed recurring parts there and the way gastronomy works. It wasn’t that we wished to have merchandising machines right here, we had been on the lookout for the fitting environment. The purpose was for folks to really feel good with us, to need to come to us and presumably play one thing.
Opening of the renovated division retailer Could. | Picture: Jakub Plíhal
You personally cannot think about that such an idea could possibly be performed even, as an instance, extra reasonably, some would say extra tastefully?
Sure, however that was not our intention. We did not need a type that was already right here. In Prague, there may be nothing comparable, functionally conceived, in a single home. And it’s the shopper’s perception that it’ll work. I ponder how the home will end up myself. We did our greatest to make him not like a grey mouse. And I’m glad with the outcome. It’s not a typical development that we’ll repeat. To be trustworthy, we have by no means performed one thing this extravagant. I respect that we had been in a position to sniff a very totally different function.
You stated that style is a subjective measure, so I am questioning to what extent, if in any respect, you have crossed your private boundaries?
For my part, style is a matter of the second, however I needed to cross the road of my convictions. You by some means have it in you. I consider {that a} mirror product of pots, for instance, would nonetheless be extra acceptable to folks than this. It is over the road for lots of people, however that is simply breaking the usual. It is attention-grabbing, sufficient to make guests pull out their telephones and take a photograph. We’re a business undertaking and on this business there’s a fixed controversy about how a lot to affect the general public, whether or not it’s proper or not. And it is rather straightforward to sentence, for instance, billboards in America, however they work. In Could, we wish to make sure that even those that are condemning him now come to see it. Allow them to attempt to expertise it.
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