Josef Gočár’s thinking about how the area between his complex of elementary and town schools and Střelecká Street should be developed evolved quite dramatically during the six years that he was intensively involved in the city’s urban planning.
In 1925, he designed a competition project for the regulation of Ulrichovo náměstí Square and the adjacent Elbe Basin, planning to develop the area bounded by today’s V Lipkách Street, Střelecká Street, Zálabí Elementary School and the bank of the Elbe River with detached villas and a sports stadium(at that time an artificial arm was still planned for the needs of
the unrealized harbor). A total of eight villas were to be built on plots in two street blocks and
a sports ground with a running track, an entrance building and two stands was to be built towards Střelecká Street. In the corner of the area, towards the confluence of the Elbe and Orlice rivers, two smaller buildings with a longitudinal plan were to be built but their purpose is not clear.
Shortly after this initial design, when the town decided not to build a sports ground in this location, Gočár changed his mind and wanted to build low terraced houses in units of three,
or at most four. Over fifty row houses were to be built (compared to the originally planned eight villas). Two more detached villas were to be built along Střelecká Street. Sometime between 1926 and 1928, Gočár changed his mind again and began to plan tenement houses there. He also changed his idea of the street network – until this time the rows of houses were to be transverse to the Elbe River, but from 1928 he began to plan rows of houses more parallel to the river.
In the city regulation plan of 10 June 1928, Gočár envisaged that the Elbe basin would be built up as follows: a central space with two symmetrical lawns ending in an arch would run lengthwise, and four completely enclosed blocks of tenement houses would develop along this space. Towards the Elbe embankment there were to be two more semi-open blocks in
an irregular “U” shape. Gočár followed this concept for the longest time, between 1928 and 1931.
In the last urban design of the Greater City of Hradec Králové, dated 18 April 1931, which Josef Gočár took over from Vladimír Zákrejs without his knowledge, he envisaged terraced housing in the Elbe basin area. The elongated slab buildings were cut by a cross street. Towards the schools there were four longitudinal buildings, towards Střelecká Street there were five longitudinal buildings. At the end near the planned bridge at the confluence there was an irregular, curved building, which in Gočár’s plans usually was a school or an office.
After WWII, Gočár’s last conception of this area was followed by Josef Havlíček, Gočár’s pupil and former employee, and František Bartoš who together designed a housing estate with tenement houses in rows housing without any visible center.
LZL
Monument Preservation
The project was never built.
Sources
- Národní technické muzeum, Archiv architektury a stavitelství, fond Josef Gočár, č. 14, inv. č.20081118/02, 20100916/01, 20041209/03
Literature
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Jakub Potůček, Hradec Králové: Architektura a urbanismus 1895–2009, Hradec Králové 2010, s. 27
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Zdeněk Lukeš; Pavel Panoch; Daniela Karasová; Jiří T. Kotalík, Josef Gočár, Praha 2011, s. 227
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Ladislav Zikmund-Lender, Struktura města v zeleni: Moderní architektura v Hradci Králové, Hradec Králové 2017, s. 81–91