Kotěra’s regulatory plan

According to his account on April 4, Jan Kotěra prepared several regulatory plans for the city of Hradec Králové. He lists a total amount of CZK 1,100 for two 1:500 regulatory plans and two more alternatives. Unfortunately, the plans have not been preserved in any archive, and there are no detailed reports on the assignment or the architect’s concept. Therefore, we can only speculate about his contribution based on a broader context.
 

For his final thesis at the Vienna Academy, Kotěra submitted an urban design for an ideal city at the mouth of the then non-existent Calais-Dover tunnel. It had a star-shaped form with rings of circular avenues and intersecting radials, similar to the solution proposed for the development of Hradec Králové on the site of the former star-shaped fortress.
 

The small scale of Kotěra’s regulatory plans, drawn up in the spring of 1903, could probably only address a specific part of the city and the area of a few blocks. The plans may not have brought any comprehensive idea to the urban vision of the city. Comparing how Kotěra thought about development in his student project, he could have developed the earlier urban plans designed by Tomáš Suhrada and Josef Zámečník and designed the first roundabout and adjacent blocks, where he could have designed the juxtaposition of buildings and promenade spaces as well as residential blocks in the spirit of garden cities. However, this idea is based on a mere hypothesis derived from the contemporary context and Kotěra’s urbanist thinking.
 

LZL