The J&T group plans to build 42-story skyscrapers in Prague

Prague - The J&T Group plans to construct skyscrapers with 42 floors in Holešovice, Prague. The tallest building in Prague is currently the former Czech Radio building, which measures 109 meters. The new skyscrapers are expected to surpass it by several meters. This is reported by the weekly Euro in its Monday edition.
    According to architect Vít Máslo, who is collaborating with J&T on the Holešovice plans, there is still a phobia of tall buildings in the Czech Republic. If the city is not to become preserved, it must open up to modern architecture, and tall buildings are part of that. He believes that the city is a living organism; if it does not develop, it will stagnate and become provincial.
    Against the construction of skyscrapers in Prague is Miloš Solař from the National Heritage Institute. He believes that the form of a skyscraper is so distinctive that it will imprint an unmistakable new identity on the site. The question, according to him, is whether this is what Prague, which has its own unique and unmistakable identity, needs. Solař further points out that the preserved face of the historical core of the Czech capital is an established brand of inestimable value. “If we replace it with skyscrapers, we risk falling into the category of a mundane metropolis constructed after World War II,” he added.
    The land of the former Tesla in Holešovice, where Máslo is designing the Prague skyscrapers, was auctioned off by the J&T group two years ago from the insolvency estate. With the motto that development is about visions, the company has planned five buildings in the area of the former industrial enterprise, including two tall ones. So far, a study of the development has been completed in three variants. The ground-level alternative settled for 20 floors, the compromise design includes 33 floors, and the extreme variant counts with 42 floors.
    The entire project, Tower City Holešovice, covers one hundred thousand square meters of new administrative, commercial, and residential spaces. Their ratio will develop according to current market demand. Nevertheless, the developer expects that at least a third of the project should consist of apartments, which entails approximately three hundred residences.
    However, construction will not begin immediately. Just the change of the zoning plan will take about two years. Whether the project, costing around four billion crowns, will be delayed by protests from opponents of high buildings, as was the case with ECM in Pankrác, remains to be seen. The dispute over two thirty-story towers in the shape of a V in Pankrác, which are to be 104 meters tall, the same height as the former Motokov headquarters, has been ongoing since 1999.