Havlovi like the proposal for the new NK building, but the debate about it annoys him

Prague - The winning design for the new National Library (NK) building by Jan Kaplický is considered interesting and original by former President Václav Havel. The very emotional debate it has provoked apparently frustrates him, and he does not understand it. He is also convinced that a competition for the future appearance of Prague's Letná, where the new building is to be located, should have been announced first, and only then for the design of the new library headquarters.
    "This clumsiness can of course be attributed to the city hall with its absolutely urbanistic insensitivity, its nonsensical consent to the cancerous growth of this city, with its corruption. But architect Kaplický is not to blame for that," Havel told ČTK.
    According to architect Václav Králíček from the Urban Development Department, it is true that it would have been better if there had been an urban competition for the entire Letná first, and then a separate competition for the library building. "But life is such that it is the other way around," Králíček said today to ČTK. There is no point now in examining who is to blame, he added.
    The library has many admirers, but also a large number of opponents. Recently, for example, President Václav Klaus criticized it. He described the proposal as "extremely arrogant, capricious, and almost haughty." According to him, the debate surrounding it is unfair. Last week in the press, he stated that only "one permitted, correct, unchallenged truth of the chosen ones is tolerated, and then only the arguments of the unqualified, who do not understand anything and interfere in everything, who should rather remain silent."
    According to Havel, the intended library is "crafty and beautiful." "It is strange and perhaps symptomatic that the Czech public, or at least a part of it, or at least its petty bourgeois part, remains silent about monuments of banality, such as the new building at Karlovo náměstí or the building at the corner of Václavské náměstí and 28. října Street opposite the Koruna Palace. They do not respond to these outbreaks of uncreativeness and banality. And when someone proposes an interesting, original building once every ten years, there is a rebellion in the village," Havel stated.
    Havel and Klaus both have a partial truth, according to Králíček. "Every major project must go through criticism," the architect noted.
    A similar reaction was evoked by the construction of the Dancing House by architect Frank Gehry on Rašínovo nábřeží, according to Havel. However, now people have already gotten used to it and it does not bother them, Havel believes. It is part of Prague's traditions that different epochs, times, and styles meet here, he added.
    He considers it important to find an appropriate shape for Letná Plain. "Letná lacks identity, it has lacked it for many decades, and we do not know what it is. Whether it is a playground, or whether there will be a revolution there once every 20 years, or whether it is a park. The whole Letná is basically a remnant of a monument. Of course, there are many variants of solutions; they have been thinking about this since the First Republic. This thinking should have culminated in a competition, and that was ten years ago. And according to the results of the competition, Kaplický could have built his library," Havel added.
    An urban competition for the whole Letná is being prepared. It could be announced in the autumn, so that its results are known next year. The assignment is currently being prepared. The competition should be preceded by a workshop. It should address issues of architectural coordination of the access from the adjacent road to the tunnel, which is the first planned building, and the library, which is the second intended building.