Re: [in-enaction] the octopus: "It's big, it's bold - but are the citizens of the Czech capital ready for this?"

Architexturez wrote:
> Architexturez wrote:
> > Architexturez. wrote:
> > > Architexturez. wrote:
> > > > Kaplicky's library design inspired by sugar bowl, human body
>
> Czech President against Kaplicky's library, challenges Olympics

....Anglified Czech Jan Kaplicky, says, 'This building couldn't even be 
conceived in a dicatorship.' Just 40 years after the Soviet T-54 tanks 
grimly rolled in belching diesel and trailing dogma, Kaplicky intends to 
unroll a cheerful architectural spectacular of colourful globular 
modernismo all over a sacred part of historic Prague.

The site is Letenske Sady (Letna Park), just across the Vltava river 
from Kafka's old Jewish quarter where the paranoid author of the 
Bohemian ghetto worried that a 'cage went in search of a bird'. From the 
library site there are great views of the city's famous bridges; and 
there's revolutionary history here too. In 1962 a statue of Stalin was 
ceremoniously blown up. So, everybody is delighted that the Czechs are 
at last free to build, unconstrained by the suffocating conservatism of 
the Soviets or the equally suffocating folklorique inheritance of 
'Magical Prague'. (In the Czech language, we are told, the word 'Praha' 
is feminine... like love, death and night.)

....

In October, Kaplicky debated his design on Czech television with the 
Mayor of Prague. He seems to have won over the public: 12,000 people 
have signed a petition insisting it is built. Kaplicky told the 
influential architecture trade magazine, Building Design: 'I think there 
is a generation against it who grew up with communism and who don't have 
experience of democracy and tolerance.' I called to ask him what the 
position was at the beginning of 2008. He said 'It's going to be built'. 
Just before Christmas Kaplicky presented the design to the Deputies. 
Perhaps influenced by the success of the telly debate which, Kaplicky 
says, has people hooting in the street and the passport guys at the 
airport saying 'good luck' to him in English, the politicos have nodded 
it through. Kafka wrote: 'It is not necessary to accept everything as 
true, one must only accept it as necessary.' Quite so. Eva Jiricna 
added: 'The baby has been born and it will need a lot of care to turn 
into an adult of some integrity.' This amazing design is really and 
truly a part of Czech national identity.

cont'd....
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/architecture/story/0,,2235896,00.html