Kimberly E. Zarecor: Architecture and Urbanism in Prague after 1945

Přednáška americké historičky architektury o architektonické a urbanistické přeměně Prahy po roce 1945.

Two primary patterns can be discerned in the treatment of Prague’s built environment after 1945—protection of the inner city's historic fabric and new building on the periphery using industrialized construction technology. After the war, the country’s population became significantly more heterogeneous and Slavic speaking, enhancing the city’s symbolic role as the capital of a Czech and Slovak nation and its political importance to the regime. The city suffered relatively little physical damage in the war and the Communist government left the historic center largely intact, so the center of Prague did not look much different in 1990 than it had in 1938. Transformation did occur in other ways as the space of the city expanded significantly and the population spread out into new prefabricated housing estates that encircled what became a small historic core at the center of a large metropolitan region.
The lecture will follow these developments from the late 1940s through to the early 1990s, both in the changes to the city center and the patterns of urban change in the new districts.