Two bilingual electronic touchscreen panels at the U Matěje stop provide visitors with more information about the history and present of Baba Housing Estate and other functionalist residential complexes in Europe that were built in the years 1927 to 1932 as part of the Werkbund project. It is possible to browse through the baba1932.com website on the panels, where all the interesting information about these unique housing estates can be found.

“In the field of care for European heritage, this is an important project of successful cooperation with foreign cities that has led to obtaining the highest award in heritage. Thanks to the initiative of the Heritage Department, not only did Prague compensate for the previous deficit in presenting the Baba site in a relatively short time and finally catch up to the leaders of the Werkbund project, Vienna and Stuttgart, but it has become an inspiration for the other sites in implementing the activities entailed in the EHL award at an advanced technological level. Thanks to efficient cooperation between the Prague City Hall Heritage Department and Technology Prague, as of today Baba can pride itself on modern touchscreen info panels for visitors of this unique site,” said Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda.

The Baba Housing Estate received the prestigious European Heritage Label in 2020. This international recognition is awarded by the European Commission to those monuments, buildings, museums, archives, documents or events which are considered milestones in the formation of today’s Europe. Along with the Baba Housing Estate, the award also went to five other functionalist housing estates of the Werkbund in Europe from the years 1927 to 1932, which are found in Stuttgart, Brno, Wrocław, Vienna and Zurich. Fulfilling the timeline of activities associated with receiving the EHL included labelling the site and providing for accessible information for visitors of this exceptional place.

At the initiative of the Prague City Hall Heritage Department, the aforementioned website and a mobile app for Baba visitors were produced. Now, in cooperation with Technology Prague, the first info system directly in the EHL location has been successfully implemented. According to Tomáš Novotný, the vice-chairman of the Technology Prague board, it is a unique modification of the touchscreen displays used in the ongoing digitisation of city bus shelters.

With the installation of the touchscreen info panels at the new public transport stops, which serve exclusively to inform the public on the site, Prague fulfilled one of the relatively challenging activities planned for 2023. Its content also includes a video presentation produced by students of the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň.

“Of all the award-winning sites, the Prague City Hall Heritage Department is best managing to implement one of the key activities of the timeline, which is cooperation with schools. In the conceptual and creative manner of “for students by students”, it approaches the task of reaching out to the young generation and presenting the Baba Housing Estate to it along with the cultural-social context of when it was made. The public thus has the opportunity to get acquainted with the result of this cooperation thanks to these info panels, which feature the video presentation by students of the Faculty of Design and Art that bears the name of leading Czech interwar graphic designer Ladislav Sutnar, who was also an investor in one of the iconic Baba villas,” states Deputy Mayor for Culture, Tourism, Heritage, Exhibitions and Animal Care Jiří Pospíšil. 

The installation of the information panels also symbolically opens the path to the next steps for planned modifications to the public spaces in the given area based on the winning design of the studio ARCHUM architekti, which produced a conceptual study for revitalising, cultivating and restoring infrastructure in the Baba heritage zone in cooperation with the Prague Institute of Planning and Development.

The Baba1932 project will entail the creation of high-quality public space here, plus facilities for visitors, who thanks to the info panels at the stops will be able to learn all the information on Werkbund sites in Europe. The collaboration with schools will also be further developed, with a set of Baba1932 activities currently being created for primary and secondary school students by a team of teachers and students at Pražské humanitní gymnázium.

The capital is thus letting its residents know that it is not only cultivating the Prague Heritage Reservation and taking care of the historic centre that is a priority, but that it also focuses attention on supporting and developing unique, architecturally valuable sites and heritage zones found in the broader surroundings of the city’s congested central area. This is the right direction, in which it plans to continue successfully.

The text is in both Czech and English versions.

The full text is at: https://www.cot.cz/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/LEO_0124_CZ_EN.pdf

The presentation of the Baba site by representatives of the Prague City Hall Heritage Department was highly progressive in terms of implementation and fulfilment of specific activities, not just those from the timeline of activities for after obtaining the EHL (the batch of Baba1932 activities for primary and secondary school students being produced), but also from the objectives of the conceptual study for revitalisation of Baba, with the launch of two interactive info panels at new public transport stops with information content from the Baba1932 website and a video presentation by students of West Bohemia’s Sutnarka being a sign of success. Prague is thus clearly the farthest along of all the sites in collaborating with the young generation, which is getting involved in implementation of Baba1932 activities as part of active cooperation with schools. A particular successful result is the aforementioned Baba1932 video presentation by students of the Jaroslav[MA1]  Sutnar Design Department at the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň. Representatives of the Viennese site of Lainz dealt extensively with the new system for heating four residential buildings, coming to the conclusion that the ideal variant, both in energy terms and in heritage terms, is a ground source heat pump. This sparked a debate on the use of energy resources in the EU and in conclusion a topic was thus established for the next meeting in 2024: energy options and alternative sources for heating and insulation in Werkbund residential complexes.

The next meetings of Werkbund site managers should take place as follows: 2024 Zurich, 2025 Prague, 2026 Wrocław, 2027 Stuttgart – to be confirmed.

collaboration with Pražské humanitní gymnázium on producing a set of activities for the senior years of primary schools and secondary schools with student participation (guided tour of the site, worksheets, manual for teachers, etc.)

 [MA1]!!! Ladislav

Unique models of the homes in the Baba Housing Estate can be seen at the Prague Castle Riding School from 10 October – 30 November 2023 as part of the exhibition Czech and Slovak Architecture.

The exhibition is the most extensive retrospective of architecture in our lands in over half a century. It is taking place on the occasion of the 30^th anniversary of the creation of independent Czech and Slovak Republics. In an area of over 2000 square metres, it presents over 500 of the most significant works of architecture by architects from the end of the 19^th century to the present day in both the Czech and Slovak Republics.

The following steps for the Werkbund site network were agreed upon, being based on the requirements for obtaining an EHL award:
· a joint information pamphlet in all the network’s languages (German, Polish, Czech and also English)
· creation of a joint logo for the network as part of a summer school in Vienna in cooperation with arts-oriented universities in Werkbund locations (2023)
· a timeline for regular annual meetings focusing on specific issues of site management (e.g. restoration of public space, heritage requirements for building renovations, etc.), specifically 2023 Brno, 2024 Zurich, 2025 Prague, 2026 Wrocław, 2027 Stuttgart
· connecting the websites of the individual locations to each other and with the EHL website

Attendees were invited to the next meeting of the Werkbund site working network, which will take place in autumn 2023 in Brno.

Follow www.baba1932.com/aktuality, where you will learn the details in time.

There is a consensus that these necessary adjustments should be modern, minimalist in nature, but designed with respect for Baba’s historical heritage.

The study’s origin is currently entering its fourth phase, which is the project’s final presentation at a public meeting with the area’s inhabitants.

Complete information on the conceptual study at https://www.iprpraha.cz/sidlistebaba.

The exhibition of “Czech Architecture from Art Nouveau to the Present” is the largest modern architecture exhibition in the Czech Republic in the last 20 years. It is held in honour of the 150^th anniversary of the birth of architect Jan Kotěra (* December 18^th, 1871), who is considered a leading figure in modern Czech architecture and from which the development line of domestic construction originates from Art Nouveau to the present. More than 500 of the most important architectural works and almost 300 architects working in our territory from the end of the 19^th century to the present will be presented on the area of over 2,000 square metres of the Prague Castle Riding Hall.

Further work will now be carried out on the analysis data and the designers will incorporate it into their designs. A meeting on the first work draft in a public hearing is expected to take place in September.

You can fill it out 17–28 March.

How can you get involved in the design for the transformation of the Baba Colony?

We would like to invite you to fill out a survey related to the modifications of the public space at Prague’s Baba Colony. The Institute of Planning and Development of the Capital of Prague in cooperation with Archum architekti s.r.o. are preparing a conceptual study for modifications to the public space. The results of the survey will be used for creating the working proposal for modifications to the intended area and for proposals in other places.

The results of the survey will be sent to you in the second half of April 2020 by e-mail or will be available at  https://www.iprpraha.cz/sidlistebaba

Participation coordinator

Lukáš Hanus

is prepared to handle further questions on behalf of the design team.

There is now a recording of the entire webinar on the IPR Prague website. We will also make all other information and materials available here.

On Tuesday, 9 February 2021, the first information webinar was held to engage the public in the proposal for the revitalisation of public spaces at the Baba Colony. The Institute of Planning and Development of the Capital of the City of Prague combined the planned and necessary reconstruction of utility networks in this part of the city with the comprehensive renewal of elements of public space, local permeability and the creation of infrastructure for possible tourism. The meeting was prepared to acquaint the local public with the project’s design and management team and to take questions. Public involvement in spatial planning, also known as participation, is as much about communication and discussion as it is about planning itself. Introductory video presentations by architect Martin Špičák from IPR Prague, Simona Vladíková from Prague City Hall’s Department of Heritage Care and Šimon Vojtík from the Archum Architekti studio were followed by two rounds of discussions with the audience.

The goal of the webinar was to explain what conceptual studies can bring and how important it is to involve the local public in the process of their creation. Naturally, the conceptual study cannot solve   the many problems in the area raised by participants at the meeting. The city is a complex organism in which many different administrators – the city districts, City Hall and its service organisations – take care of the elements of public space. However, the study is a path to friendlier, more comfortable and dignified public space that complements the character of a cultural monument. At the next level, participation can help popularise many other topics and help address them.

Civic participation in urban planning is not yet a common part of city development, though the situation is significantly improving. A certain distrust on the part of the participants in the possibility of the study and the fulfilment of the objectives, which was evident from the discussion, is therefore understandable. From the point of view of the participants in the discussion, the area of Prague’s Baba Colony suffers from many problems, only some of which are in the power of the study to resolve. However, there was more or less agreement that the modifications to the street network, ensuring better access to the landscape, creating new and cultivating existing public spaces, together with non-disruptive service for visitors can be beneficial for the whole area, especially for its inhabitants.

In the coming months, we will work with the public to reach an understanding of the problems, values and opportunities for the development of public space so that we can propose the best possible solutions. A question that arose directly from the discussion was whether there would be some form of local referendum or other voting on the study. The team of conceptual study implementers tried to explain that the systematic participation of the public in a multi-stage discussion ensures more than a referendum on a professional solution could offer. It guarantees the public a participatory process that not only takes into account their needs, but also provides a clear explanation of how architects, urban planners, water managers and politicians were brought into the study. The public will be able to influence both the proposed amendments and comment on the draft version of the proposal. Participation is not about voting on the least acceptable proposal, but about understanding the needs of the public and translating this comprehension into proposals for concrete implementations. 

Another follow-up step is a survey as a basis for understanding the public’s approach or view of the current state of the Baba Colony. It will take place in late February/early March 2021. It will contain emotional maps (a record of problems, values and opportunities of public space on the map) and closed questions testing pre-identified problems. But most importantly, it will contain open questions providing interested parties with enough space to explain their ideas in detail. Residents of the Baba Colony will find a link to the internet survey in their mailboxes, while others can find it on the website of the Prague 6 district, the Prague Institute of Planning and Development website, on social media and elsewhere.

By Suzanne Ragen

It is odd to write a memoir about a house that has no first hand memory for me. But I was born from that house and left it suddenly when I was two years old. It still stands on a hill overlooking the fairy tale city of Prague. It feels like a living part of my past because of stories told to me by my parents and photographs they have saved. There is even a picture of my father proudly holding a shovel on a barren hilltop, ready to take the first step in breaking ground for his family’s new house. As an adult, I have visited the house several times. The most recent visit was in the summer of 2007, when Brooks and I were there with our nine grandchildren and three children and their spouses.

In the early 1930s my father was one of the founders of the Bauhaus style Werkbund development named Baba. The name comes from an old Bohemian word of affection for grandmother, as the hilltop site has ancient historical and mythical memories. The group of men who developed Baba were largely intellectuals and businessmen who considered them enlightened representatives of the new Czechoslovakian democratic state. My father told of the great enthusiasm among the founders, and lively political discussions over the tops of the low garden fences.

The cubist architecture of all the houses was very modern, very avant-garde at the time. Prague was famous for its pastel baroque and rococo and art nouveau buildings, all curves and elaborate Hapsburg statuary, oddly shaped windows and balconies and pointed roofs. Our house had straight lines, a flat roof, huge plate glass windows and was covered with smooth white painted concrete. The interior was also minimalist, with built in cabinets and clean open spaces. All the houses around it were a similar geometric aesthetic, but with different sizes and floor plans. No two were alike because they had different architects and were built for specific families. My parents hired Josef Fuchs and Otokar Fischel as their architects. Baba was the only Werkbund housing estate in Europe that was financed by private clients. These were single family dwellings with individual but harmonizing landscaping.

My parents, Nadia and Frank Munk, moved into the just completed house in 1933. My brother Michael was born in 1934. I was born in 1937. By then, those lively political discussions over the garden fences had taken on a dark and anxious tone. In Germany Hitler was preparing to take over Europe. In May of 1938 he invaded and annexed Austria and on September 30 of that year Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier met in Munich and agreed to cede one third of Czechoslovakia to Germany, the infamous “Munich Agreement”. Prime Minister Chamberlain returned to a cheering England, declaring that they had insured “peace in our time”.

IN April 1939 German tanks rolled into Prague and up the hill to Hradcany Castle, the seat of Czech government. There was a late snowfall that day. My father was one of many Czechs who stood silently, with arms crossed, some in tears, to watch the tanks go by. The lead driver unbelievably asked for directions, and my father recalls that no one replied, pretending not to hear or to understand German. (A strange aside here is that Brooks and I were rummaging through old LIFE magazines in a book store about ten years ago, and we found an April 1939 issue which showed just that scene, as it was so often described by my father.)

It was becoming clear to my parents that they would need to leave the country because my father was very involved in the Czech government. He was also a Jew but that was not the most immediate reason to be worried at that time. My father wrote in his memoirs: “One day in May a man came to my office. After closing the door carefully, he showed me the ID card of the former Czech Secret Service. I was flabbergasted: this was two months after the German invasion and to identify oneself this way was out of the question. The man then said: ‘I am to show you a little paper.’ And he showed me an order by the Gestapo to arrest all members of the Economic Committee of the Socialist Party. My name was on top since I had served as its chairman. He then left, but I did not have to be told anything more.”

Complicated arrangements were hastily made with the help of the Red Cross and a Quaker friend, Beatrice Wellington, as well as the Rockefeller Institute in New York, where my father had been a Rockefeller fellow. A reservation was made for the four of us on a Kindertrain that was taking Jewish children out of Prague through Holland to England.

We left our house on Baba hill on May 20, 1939. It was a Saturday and my parents told the cook and nanny that we were going away for the weekend. My mother told her mother and sisters the same thing, not knowing if she would ever see them again. My parents each carried a small suitcase. My father’s was a round black leather bag with brown leather trim and his initials FM. I still have that case. Michael and I were each allowed one toy; my choice was a large wooden decorated egg that held many tiny toys. I still have that egg, but the tiny toys are long gone.

We took a taxi to the Woodrow Wilson train station, and in only 30 minutes the train reached the border of Germany. That border was policed by the dreaded SS in their black uniforms with the skull and bones emblem on their caps. A most anxious moment for my parents was the detailed examination of our exit documents. My father called this the most stressful moment of his long life. But my father had once done a favor for a station agent there, and he managed to speed us through, by insisting that the train continue on schedule. Our long journey to America had begun.

My parents would not see the house on Baba they had built with such high hopes for many years. Soon after we left, it was taken over by a German officer’s family. When my father did visit Prague during his work for UNRRA after the war, he found it vacant and with several bullet holes in the living room walls. We have never learned the story behind them.

I have been to that house in the 1970s with Brooks and my parents. We walked the streets, and my parents told us of the excitement of building their house and helping to plan the whole development. They were amazed at how the trees had grown and the gardens filled out. They said that the houses looked about the same as when they left. They told us about their neighbors, quite a few of whom were still there for us to meet. They had thought that they would return to Prague after the war, but when they learned that the Communists would be occupying the country, they decided to stay in America. They then sold the Baba house.

After my father died in 1999, Brooks and I took my mother to Prague for what turned out to be a final reunion with her five sisters and one brother. The week before our arrival, my Uncle Vladimir died; his funeral was postponed until we arrived. On the calendar by his bed, he had written “Nadia arrives today”.

In the summer of 2007 we visited Prague with our children and nine grandchildren. A few months before our trip, I wrote a letter addressed only to THE FAMILY WHO LIVES AT 5 NA VRSKU STREET, as I did not know the name of the people who lived in our old house. I promptly received a response by Email from the son of the widow who lives there that we would be welcome to visit her. A date and time were set and all 17 of us arrived in front of that house on Baba hill in our little private bus. Pani Hoffman was waiting for us with both her sons and their wives and two grandsons. It was a warm and sunny afternoon. She had prepared delicious little sandwiches, Czech pastries with poppy seeds and apricots, fruit juice and tea and the family entertained us in the charming garden. Then she invited us inside.

The interior of the house had changed little since our previous visits. In fact, little had changed since the photos from my parents’ time. We all climbed the outdoor stairs to the roof terrace to admire the view of Prague. We could see those fairy tale spires, Prague Castle, and the Vltava River with its many bridges. I remembered a photo of my father on that same terrace, wearing a suit and a hat and leaning on the iron railing, full of pride and hope.

The children understood that I was born there, but that must have seemed like ancient history to them. What really impressed them was when one of the Hoffman grandsons removed a painting from the wall and showed them a bullet hole put there during the Nazi years. It had been carefully preserved as a little piece of the history of the house on Baba hill.