Complete information about the National Library

The Mayor of Prague, Pavel Bém, published his opinion on the issue of the National Library on the idnes server on October 15th, complemented by ten commandments for further action. The first point states: "Stop lying about the National Library (this applies to everyone including the media)". From his position, such a statement is permissible. Personally, I would strip this commandment of the suspicion that someone is intentionally lying, phrasing it as: "Provide (not just) truthful and complete information about the National Library." Whether it is followed or not would, in itself, suffice to clarify the discussion about the National Library. It is not essential whether someone likes the design proposed by Future Systems or not. It does not matter whether someone else considers the chosen plot suitable or unsuitable. These are, after all, criteria judged entirely subjectively, without predetermined evaluation rules, and therefore cannot be assessed democratically. The only objective tool, the result of which should be clear, understandable, and indisputable for society, is the architectural competition. This holds true provided that the first commandment of Bém is respected. If the leadership of the National Library were to adhere to it, we would have known for six months that the competition was unnecessarily tied to a redefined assignment, compounded by a strict requirement to comply with all binding demands of the construction program. Attempts to rectify this regrettable mistake led to a whole chain of non-standard and unjustified steps by the library's management and the competition jury, which ultimately raised doubts about the regularity of the entire process. As an illustration, one example among many:

In response to a question from Lidové noviny in an interview on October 13th: "Allegedly, you yourself were responsible for the condition of placing conservation funds above ground disappearing, thus prompting the destruction of the competition", the General Director of the National Library, Vlastimil Ježek, replies: "I don't remember it in detail, but I truly don't recall proposing anything like that." On the other hand, the competition protocol from the first round states: "Vlastimil Ježek stated that the criterion of placing national conservation funds above ground could be omitted in the case of sufficiently interesting architecture." To illustrate the situation and understand the key turning point in the competition, it must be added that these words were spoken before the actual evaluation of the proposals, meaning before the jury members had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the individual proposals. What motive could Mr. Ježek have had to turn a strict condition, which was reiterated several times in response to competitors' questions, 180 degrees, when according to his own words, it was only the Future Systems proposal that convinced him and the entire jury that it was unnecessary to insist on placing the National Conservation Fund's storage above ground? He must have known Kaplický's proposal even before the actual evaluation.
Is this not a demonstrable breach of anonymity and manipulation that condemns the outcome of the competition to the category of unusable? Is not the six-month passionate discussion unnecessary? Why has no one yet pieced together this simple mosaic from publicly available information?

October 15, 2007   Tomáš Hradečný - Managing Director, HŠH architects, s.r.o.