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Building for Pictures: A Photography Gallery and Framework for Cultural Expansion

Part 2 Project 2006
Viktor Jak
 London Metropolitan University | UK
A much-needed Cultural Framework could raise the ambition for a cultural expansion and give enough gravitas for a third node to emerge in central Prague.

The framework favours timber as a sustainable construction material, both for traditional city block architecture as well as the three investigational tall public buildings.

The 36-meter tall gallery building of engineered timber allows the public life of the street to enter into the building. Side lit galleries offer a range of scales and grain of exhibition space and servicing.

Finally, timber as a properly urban façade material in terms of scale and decorum is investigated.


This proposition tackles the last undeveloped site at the edge of the UNESCO protected centre of Prague. An urban framework is proposed to address issues of density, infrastructure and public space. At the heart of this framework is a design for a Building of Pictures – a major gallery of contemporary photography – that seeks to re-assert Prague’s status as a major cultural centre in Europe and celebrate photography as a major art form.

The scheme proposes a gradation of spaces from the city to the room, from the relative anarchy of the street to more well-tempered settings. This is addressed both environmentally and in terms of occupation. Aligned with this thinking is a material strategy that progresses from the crude to the refined. Engineered timber is employed to make both a massive ribbed vertical structure and the floor plates that tie it together. Rooms are exquisitely lined with softwood planks of varying widths and finish.
2006
Building for Pictures, Prague Czech Republic. A proposal for a cultural quarter with a gallery for modern photography
19ha of in central Prague; part of UNESCO's protection, currently railway land, split in two by a flyover
The new framework places a group of tall public buildings on an old processional route; a third node in the city is created
A framework plan with a cultural focus; an urban block of mixed use, a cultural quarter of public cultural buildings and an urban village of workshops and studios.
Public buildings around a new public square defined by the gallery, a train station and the flyover. The Prague typology of the public passage is reused in many places, creating a very permeable ground plate.
A gallery for modern photography is proposed. This 6 storey timber house offers permanent as well as temporary photo exhibitions, education spaces, restaurants and book shops.
A permeable ground plan allow people to meander in off the street through the public courtyard, past the many small gallery spaces, shops and cafés and up through a processional stair to enter the gallery on the first floor.
A sequential route from pavement to picture; through light and dark, and through public and more private spaces.
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The whole 36meter tall building would be made of engineered timber. Solid cross laminated panels of low-grade spruce are made into ribbed floor panels and volumetric wall units and built up in a platform type of construction.
External elevation, section & internal elevation. Timber wraps around the whole building and folllows the visitor inside to become more finely grained wall surfaces.
Small low-grade off-cuts of oak would be laminated into storey high oak panels. These would be stained to various tones of grey, using iron vitriol which reacts with the oak's tannins creating a natural type of colouring.
A strong charachteristic form in the city picking up on the very pastelly colours in Prague.
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