"Dancing House" is a unique monument of Deconstructivism, designed and built on the banks of Vlatva River in 1996 by architects from Croatia and Canada Vlado Milunic and Frank Gehry. Sometimes it's jokingly called "Ginger and Fred" in honor of the star couple of dancers Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. The former owner of the building, the company CBRE Global Investors, will remain one of the tenants of the building, which houses 4,000 sq.m of offices and commercial premises.
Experts point out that these objects belong to the so-called Trophy houses. This unique objects are designed by renowned architects and built with the most modern technology. Such objects are always in exceptional demand.
The Dancing House won Time magazine's design contest in 1997.[7] The Dancing House was also named one of the five most important buildings in the 1990s by Architekt Magazine
The story behind the Dancing House
The "Dancing House" is set on a property of great historical significance. Its site was the location of a house destroyed by the U.S. bombing of Prague in 1945. The plot and structure lay decrepit until 1960, when the area was cleared. The neighboring plot was co-owned by the family of Václav Havel, who spent most of his life there. Havel became a popular leader and was subsequently elected president of Czechoslovakia. Thanks to his authority, the idea to develop the site grew. Havel eventually decided to have Milunić survey the site, hoping for it to become a cultural center, though this was not the result.
Václav Havel ( 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, an author, a poet, and Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then as the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003 and was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays, and memoirs.
Gehry and Milunić began to develop Milunić's original idea of a building consisting of two parts, static and dynamic ("yin and yang"), which were to symbolize the transition of Czechoslovakia from a communist regime to a parliamentary democracy.
The structure
The style is known as deconstructivist ("new-baroque" to the designers) architecture due to its unusual shape. The "dancing" shape is supported by 99 concrete panels, each a different shape and dimension. On the top of the building is a large twisted structure of metal nicknamed Mary.
In the middle of a square of buildings from the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the Dancing House has two main parts. The first is a glass tower that narrows at half its height and is supported by curved pillars; the second runs parallel to the river and is characterized by undulating mouldings and unaligned windows.
The famous dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are represented in the structure. A tower made of rock is used to represent Fred. This tower also includes a metal head. A tower made of glass is used to represent Ginger.
The Dancing House won Time magazine's design contest in 1997.[7] The Dancing House was also named one of the five most important buildings in the 1990s by Architekt Magazine. By the way, the Dancing House has also been called inappropriate in the classical city of Prague.
And tonight I was also at the Dancing House, and had a nice GT, where I spoked to two coming architects "students", where we actually admired the project, and took some more pictures :-)
