sng_2016-05-12_high-single-crop_k3

CARE (SORGE )
FOR ARCHITECTURE
marián zervan (ed.)
a
A

B

15. Mostra
Internazionale
di Architettura
Partecipazioni Nazionali

Care ( Sorge ) for Architecture
Asking the Arché of Architecture to Dance
Pavilion of The Czech Republic and The Slovak Republic
15th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
The Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava
The National Gallery in Prague
Ministry of Culture of The Slovak Republic
Ministry of Culture of The Czech Republic

01. Statement p. 6
marián zervan
02. On the Slovak National Gallery site’s genesis, analysis and reflection p. 12
monika mitášová
03a. Textual Interpretation of Compositional and Clustering Arrangements p. 54
marián zervan, monika mitášová
03b. Architectural Interpretation of Compositional and Clustering Arrangements p. 66
benjamín brádňanský, vít halada
Co-authors : monika mitášová, marián zervan
In collaboration with : andrej strieženec, mária novotná,
anna cséfalvay, danica pišteková
04. Chronology p. 94
monika mitášová, marián zervan
05. Project Description p. 128
marián zervan
06. Photos of the SNG Model p. 134

01.
STATEMENT
CARE (SORGE )
FOR ARCHITECTURE:
ASKING THE ARCHÉ
OF ARCHITECTURE
TO DANCE marián zervan

Architecture must never lose its project,
or become paralyzed in solicitude (Fürsorgen),
or get lost in concern (Besorgen) – rather it must
find the courage to invite the arché to dance.
— variations on heidegger
We fill our lives more with metaphors
on fighting than on dancing.
— variations on lakoff
7
7

The idea to build the SNG (Slovak National Gallery) came about
after the Second World War. An emerging society, art historians
and architects were all making efforts. Each group had its own
conception, and took its own small steps. Society passed legislation,
and provided space in the former military Vodné kasárne
(Water Barracks). The SNG director Karol Vaculík desired
expansion of collections, and therefore of the Gallery’s space.
Architects tried out various sites and forms for the Gallery.
These steps led to the decision to form the new SNG site by
remodelling and adding to the Baroque Water Barracks, and
linking the public spaces of the city square adjacent.
The new site, and its individual architectural components,
came about in several stages through the 1960s and 1970s.
The architect Vladimír Dedeček found a phased solution, both
bold and unusual for its time. The building of a fourth and
front-facing side to the Water Barracks, along with the opening
up of the square as public space, inspired Dedeček to
employ a bridge construction, which connected the two wings
of the existing historical structure. He made this bridging into
exhibition space for modern and contemporary art. In this he
abandoned the classical structure of storeys, creating three
levels of floors that formed a total space and three progressive
unenclosed storeys. He shifted self-contained forms like the
office building, the library and the originally-planned outdoor
sculpture gallery in different directions. This made possible
clusters of contemporary new architecture and abstracted
classical forms of agoras, amphitheatres, odeón halls and
stoas. For a decade, he laboured to push through a complex
building/area site, but never succeeded in winning others over,
even in terms of proposed materials and technologies. The ultimate
result was imposing, but has from the first even until
now been misunderstood by the public, and many of Slovakia’s
architects. After 1989 there were thoughts to level the whole
site and build a new gallery structure. Public surveys and discussions
ensured, and from these there emerged a competition
for a renovation and addition.
8

The SNG building/area has long been seen as a nexus of
multiple front lines: A) The struggle with prejudice and custom:
generations of citizens are unable to overcome pseudo-historical
beliefs in shaping the city, and hanker for conservation and
restoration. B) Political disputes: after 1989’s Velvet Revolution,
the site including the bridge was put forward as the embodiment
of the monstrosities of the former (socialist/communist)
regime and its aspirational megalomania. The political elite, with
iconoclastic ambitions and rush to swap old models for new,
wavered over what to do with the site. Only the next generation
of architects, from here and abroad, proved able to de-politicize
the issue of the SNG site, grasping it as a cultural and architectural
challenge and opportunity. Then even the political elite
saw it as an undertaking to be fostered. C) Developer power
play: after 1989, building contractors and real estate developers
in the new capitalism of post-socialistic countries came up
with an ideological and pseudo-expert mask, intended to win
commissions in favour of demolition. There is only one way that
architects can contend with the combined forces of politicians
and developers, and it is not in front-line words or even metaphors;
rather they must do a verbal and metaphorical dance,
in which no one is pushed and everyone voluntarily engages
enjoyably in pursuing a common rhythm. D) Struggles among
architects and pseudo-experts: architects and preservationists
found themselves in mutually-incompatible discussions; in them,
rather than looking for a project, they nitpicked at flaws in construction,
technology and urban design, and suggested clearing
the area and building a new SNG. On the other side were
those who advocated in favour of the area as it is, who came
to believe it could be saved only if they toned down the boldness
of the problem. In the end it emerged that there were some
who understood the SNG could only live through a renewal of
Dedeček’s invitation to dance. Two architectural competitions
for renovation came out of these discussions, for a refurbishment
and an addition to the area, which would reflect the state
of archi tectural thought in Slovakia.
9

Competitions on renovation, refurbishment and addition to
the SNG have opened new thinking processes on the Gallery’s
spatial form. These processes are among the most significant
architectural tasks being undertaken in Central Europe, comparable
to solving the social and ecological issues of those living
in our globalized world’s baser conditions and environs. We can
never attain bold projects unless we understand the diversity of
cultures. When the SNG site originated, it expanded the horizons
of architectural awareness; now the competition designs
for renovation have brought with them many questions and answers.
Now as then, there are no universal solutions that can
function in the absence of awareness of the cultural particulars of
each society and environment – and particularly unless there is
a dance, shared by architects, theoreticians and historians, and
aficionados, who have the courage to take on public opinion.
The construction associated with the SNG is not a battle
over a single piece of architecture, though our history has many
such stories. Here we have what is above all the meeting of two
ways of thinking and building: fighting and dancing. Although
the language of fighting remains common, we hope the language
of dancing still has a chance. Therefore this is not just
some chronicle of a building, or an appeal or complaint, or a record
of the meticulous attention of preservationists and those
devoted to historical replicas and unprocessed concern; rather
the issue should be to imagine architecture’s potential. It is an
awakening of hope, of care for architecture, which hopefully will
be rid of the timidity manifested in pedestrian, generalized and
participative pseudo-solutions, in order to once more find the
courage to put forward intrepid cultural projects, countless invitations
by arché to architecture to dance. This would make possible
the reemergence of gaia architectura [ joyful architecture ].
10

02.
ON THE SLOVAK
NATIONAL GALLERY
SITE’S GENESIS,
ANALYSIS
AND REFLECTION monika mitášová

study for addition of southern/danube sng wing :
Vladimír Dedeček, 1962 1
study for the architects’ association zväz slovenských architektov :
Vladimír Dedeček, 1963 2
initial project, and alternative initial project :
Vladimír Dedeček, 1967 3
comprehensive project solution for project execution :
Vladimír Dedeček (lead architect)
and Peter Mazanec, Mária Oravcová, Ján Piekert (supporting architects)
and X. ateliér školských a kultúrnych stavieb, 1969 4
structural engineering project :
Otokar Pečený, B.[?] Zuzánek, Jindřich Trailin (steel construction),
Miloš Hartl, Karol Mesík, Mária Rothová (ferro-concrete construction)
interior architecture project :
Jaroslav Nemec
1st stage
− renovation of original building
– depository, first section
– exhibit building, addition of front wing (bridging)
– heating plant
2nd stage
– research/administrative building – upper construction
– depository, second section
– restoration studios
– photo laboratory
– library, study and outdoor amphitheatre with cinema
– lecture hall
– studios
3rd stage
– variable building, with temporary exhibit space and main entry (not realized)
4th stage
– garage with terraced ground-level roof and outdoor sculpture gallery (not realized)
general contractor :
Stavoprojekt Bratislava
13

investor :
Povereníctvo pre školstvo a kultúru
(after 1969 called the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Socialist Republic)
via the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava
construction :
Pamiatkostav, n. p., Žilina and Hydrostav, n. p., Bratislava;
additionally, Priemstav, n. p., Bratislava; Mostáre, n. p.,
Brezno and Stavoindustria, n. p., Bratislava
1st stage
1969, 5 addition (bridging)
and 1971, 6 renovation of Water Barracks – completed 1976 7
2nd stage
1972–1977 8 ( preliminary permission for use 1979, 9 final inspection 1980 10 )
building volume (total built space ) :
101,381 m 3
expenses :
approx. 106 mil. 350 thousand Kčs
typology :
Cultural sector project, a gallery area site with permanent
and short-term art exhibitions
14

1 Author’s dating: 1969–1978. In: Životopis z 26. novembra 1987.
Fond Vladimír Dedeček, Zbierka architektúry, úžitkového umenia
a dizajnu SNG. This was confirmed using an unpublished text
[multiple authors]: Záverečné technicko-ekonomické vyhodnotenie
dokončenej stavby “Rekonštrukcia a prístavba Slovenskej národnej
galérie”. [THS, SNG, Stavoprojekt], Bratislava 1980, 22 numbered
pages and appendices. In: Fond Vladimír Dedeček, Zbierka
architektúry, úžitkového umenia a dizajnu SNG.
2 Dated based on a published text by VACULÍK, Karol: Nové priestory
a expozície Slovenskej národnej galérie. Výtvarný život, 22, 1977,
vol. 7, pp. 12–19.
3 The investment was approved in 1965. In: [unsigned]
Záverečné technicko-ekonomické vyhodnotenie dokončenej
stavby “Rekonštrukcia a prístavba Slovenskej národnej galérie”.
Cited in Note 1 above.
4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 Ibidem.
15

Building(s) and spatial relationships
The new buildings of the gallery site area have been constructed
around three public spaces, such that they connect the river
banks with two of the city centre’s squares.
The southern space, facing the river, is a rectangular courtyard,
bounded by the historical building’s three wings and the
new facing wing (bridging). The underground gallery depository
lies underneath. At the courtyard’s centre is a raised plinth level
planted with grass and trees, designed for outdoor sculpture
exhibitions and visitor use (the reinstallation of the historical
fountain, with a circular pool connected to the building’s air
conditioning, was not realized in the courtyard because the investor
altered the air conditioning plan 11 ). Thus the river bank
area is connected to the gallery site via a “sculpture courtyard”
and a view into the historical building.
The second public space is an outdoor amphitheatre with
cinema, west of the courtyard. It connects the southern facing
wing (bridging) with the lower pavilion of the library and lecture
hall in the taller northwestern administrative building (which
houses restoration studios, a photo lab and a residential apartment
flat). The amphitheatre’s side wall of perforated concrete
forms allows a visual connectedness that parallels the river. The
western side, adjacent Hotel Devín, also made allowance for
outdoor sculpture installation (but this was not realized).
The third public space on the north, behind the historical building,
was designed as a terraced roof of garages and storage. The
terraces’ walkable roofs and lawn was meant to be an outdoor
sculpture gallery (this building was not realized; the site came to
serve as a gallery car park). The northern terraces were designed
to connect the river bank and the gallery site area, through several
varying heights, and the historic city centre to the north.
The main entrance to the gallery site from the river promenade
was placed at its southwest corner, near Belluš’ Hotel Devín.
A gallery of temporary exhibitions, or “Kunsthalle”, was designed
16

to be on the floor above (the site’s whole corner section was
not realized, and two apartment buildings from the 1940s remained).
The main entrance became the side entrances and
central entryway is from the courtyard / see p. 51 /.
Situation
A group of gallery buildings with public spaces, in the centre of
Bratislava on the Danube River banks (previously known variously
as Nábrežná ulica, Dunajské nábrežie, nábrežie Batthányiho,
Fadruszovo, Jiráskovo, currently called Rázusovo). In addition
to the river road, the site is bordered by the streets Riečna
to the west, Mostová to the east, and Paulínyho-Tótha to the
north. The streets connect the site to the east with Štúrova and
to the north with the square Hviezdoslavo námestie.
From the year 1700 a granary was located on SNG land, and
later the town militia’s Vodné kasárne (Water Barracks). The
four-wing Theresian barracks and it its square courtyard (1759–
1763) has been attributed to the Viennese architect Franz Anton
Hillebrandt. Its southern wing and parts of the eastern and western
wings was demolished in 1941 when the river road was widened.
12 The remaining “three-wing” arrangement was used as
11 The air system, by the French firm Tunzini, was to have been
computer-controlled, with water pumped from a dedicated well.
Expert analysis by the firm Strojexport Praha led them to select
Weiss from Austria (which later changed its commercial name
to ÖKG Grünbach), which planned a cheaper automatic/manual
control system that pumped water from the adjacent Danube.
The glass ceiling over the bridge’s exhibit spaces was sealed
with permanent plastic silicon into full glass Weginplast walls by
the Austrian firm Wegscheider Farben. For more see Záverečné
technicko-ekonomické vyhodnotenie dokončenej
stavby “Rekonštrukcia a prístavba Slovenskej národnej galérie”
as cited in Note 1, pp. 7–8. An expert appraisal in 1990 found air
condition unit consumption to be higher than what corresponded
to the stated period of operation. Thus the less expensive air
conditioning purchased and installed was in fact used.
12 HOLČÍK, Štefan. The gallery building also housed the Múzeum
hygieny. Staromestské noviny newspaper, 20 October 2007.
17

the arcaded palace with a “cour d’honneur”. The renowned cafe
and dance hall “Espresso Taranda” rented space in the building
until 1948 in the reinforced courtyard terrace. Around 1950, the
historical barracks was first renovated to be used to preserve
and present the Slovak National Gallery’s historical collections
(František Florians and Karol Rozmány Sr were responsible for
the design and renovation, 1949–1955).
In the early 1950s, Professor Emil Belluš and his architecture
students at the Slovak Technical University took part in site
selection for a new SNG pavilion or addition. In the 1957–58
academic year, Belluš published his studio’s student projects,
suggesting two locations: the first was a new SNG pavilion
construction at Gottwaldovo námestie (currently Námestie slobody),
with a detached pavilion gallery becoming part of the
new “technical university city” (the new neighbourhood around
technical university buildings); the second was an addition to
the historic Water Barracks, with the new addition expanding
exhibition space for the gallery’s burgeoning collection in the
historic building, and becoming part of the river promenade.
In 1952, Vladimír Dedeček graduated under Emil Belluš’
super vision, specifically with a thesis project on the Výstavný
pavilón SNG (SNG exhibition pavilion) located at a third site:
Kamenné námestie (the former Steinplatz, later Kiev Square)
in Bratislava. After years of working with his students, Belluš
made the following summary in the late 1950s: “[u]rban planning,
architectural, operational and financial studies proved
that the most realistic location for the expanded construction
of the Slovak National Gallery is the current tract on Rázusovo
nábrežie by the Danube, where a purposeful construction of
a face wing can well assure the gallery’s growing needs, as well
as creating an expedient and sufficiently spacious environment
for occasional special exhibits and exhibits of contemporary art.”
(BELLUŠ 1957, pp. 93–94.) This statement is in line with Belluš’ effort to
complete a modernized river area with a new skyline, i.e. his abiding
endeavour to finish a Danube promenade from Harminc’s
18

uilding, currently housing the directorate of the Slovak National
Museum (originally the agricultural museum) and the area of Park
kultúry a oddychu (now being demolished). But, in Dedeček’s
words, the main “inspiration for the idea to complete the SNG
with a modern facing wing that would enclose the yard in the
spirit of Hillebrandt’s original concept” was always the SNG
director Dr. Karol Vaculík (DEDEČEK, undated [1975], p. 1).
The contemporary guidelines Smernica pre výstavbu mesta
Bratislavy, from a group led by the city’s chief architect Milan
Hladký and chief city planner Milan Beňuška in October 1963,
states: “In terms of political administration, the commercial
and social centre should be developed in the context of the
current centre, expanded to subsume the tracts attached to
the Danube at Podhradské nábrežie and near the harbour, reassessing
the meaning of the Danube river area, building it
up as the city’s most frequented zone and thus emphasizing
the highly social function of these spaces... By 1970, a road
bridge to be constructed over the Danube in the Rybné námestie
space.” 13 Thus some of the riverbank’s historical architecture
was, in keeping with 1960s urban plans, demolished,
in part in connection with the Most SNP bridge construction.
Among these were burgher residences on Lodná ulica behind
Belluš’ Hotel Devín; some of the residences survived on Ulica
Paulínyho-Tótha, but the breadth and scale of the riverside had
changed. In this spirit, in 1965 the Slovenský ústav pamiatkovej
starostlivosti (the historical sites institute) issued the following
judgment on modernizing and refurbishing the riverside,
and Dedeček’s study for SNG renovation and construction:
“In principle, the view of this comprehensive urbanism solution
for the entire block and the modernity of the architectural style
is correct; the historical buildings in this quarter are physically
worn, and disrupt the additional new construction that would
13 BEŇUŠKA, Milan – HLADKÝ, Milan. Smernice pre výstavbu mesta
Bratislavy. Bratislava : Útvar hlavného architekta mesta Bratislavy,
October 1963, p. 10, 15 and 22.
19

give the quarter a new scale and expression, and furthermore
from the perspective of historical site significance they are of
little value and not studied by preservationists.” (The institute’s
director at the time was Ing. arch. Ján Hraško.) 14
Regarding preservation studies, the statement goes on
to identify just two historical buildings: the renovated “late
Renaissance” Water Barracks and the dilapidated “neoclassical
building” of the former horse railway terminus close to the
Hotel Carlton Savoy. Dedeček had the latter documented (as
part of the SNG reconstruction and addition project), but it was
taken down because the ceilings’ structural integrity was unsound.
The residential buildings on Ulica Paulínyho-Tótha were
at the time considered “unworthy of preservationist study”, to be
“purged” for the sake of both the Water Barracks and Harminc’s
addition and interconnection of three of Bratislava’s hotels, the
Carlton, the Savoy and the National, into a single modern hotel
(project 1927, realization 1928). With this intervention, Harminc
fundamentally changed and shifted the scale of the Hviezdoslavo
námestie square. Thus it was not just Professor Belluš’ Hotel
Devín, but also his generational predecessor’s triple hotel Carlton
Savoy ( National ) that had greatly outdone the surrounding
buildings in size and scale – indeed, by the 1930s a new urban
and architectural dimension had taken hold on the modernized
riverfront, which around 1950 Belluš affirmed and elaborated
with his Hotel Devín. Bratislava’s riverbank, touching its historical
core, had taken on new significance as a city promenade,
bringing the river’s presence right to Hviezdoslavovo námestie.
This modernized riverfront took on a new line, height and volume
of buildings, but also a new urban, social and recreational meaning
for its citizens. It was another step toward the city’s later
expansion to the other bank of the river, into Petržalka.
20

Program and spatial solution
The genesis of the Slovak National Gallery as an institution
drew, as many authors including Emil Belluš have noted, on the
exhibition activities of Slovakia’s first independent “centre” of
Slovak and Czech artists in the Umelecká beseda slovenská (by
Alois Balán – Jiří Grossmann, competition project 1924, realization
1925–1926) on Šafárikovo námestie near the Danube.
Of it, Belluš wrote in 1957: “Though it had long been riven by
political courses, there was such an upsurge in the life of art
in Slovakia under the new conditions that the auspicious exhibit
pavilion within a few short years to be insufficient.” (BELLUŠ
1957, p. 91) In 1933 the first permanent installation of Slovakia’s
19 th and 20 th century painters came about, called The National
Slovak Gallery, in Harminc’s newly completed National Museum
in Martin. Ten years later, a Slovak Gallery opened in the Slovak
National Museum on the banks of the Danube in Bratislava. But
as an independent institution, the SNG – founded in summer
1948 – received new tasks: “It was a great disadvantage that
Slovakia had a late start in putting together a representational
national art collection. It was also disadvantageous that the
SNG came about through a process opposite to most European
galleries: not through an accumulation of [art] objects that
forced the inception of a public collection, but by founding an
institute for the purpose of originating a coherent collection.”
(VACULÍK 1957, p. 78.)
A secondary aspect of this late founding of the Slovak
National Gallery institution was that, along with the national
archive, there was no initial chance for this gallery to be located
in a suitable historical palace or monastery complex, as had
been the case with Slovakia’s national and state institutions
14 Opinion of the director (name not shown, signature illegible
[possibly Ing. arch. Ján Hraško /?/]) of the Slovenský ústav
pamiatkovej starostlivosti a ochrany prírody, dated in Bratislava
11 January 1965 and sent to the SNG and Bratislava's chief
architect's office. Typewritten, 2 pages. In: Fond Karol Vaculík,
Archív výtvarného umenia SNG.
21

founded earlier. Therefore construction of a new gallery building
brought with it the advantage of allowing formulation of
a new architectural undertaking. 15 The need was defined for
a localization of art depository, restoration, study/research and
exhibition spaces that would also provide sufficiently variable
indoor and outdoor galleries, of a nature that refurbished buildings
originally serving as residential and service wings in palaces,
monasteries or barracks could not offer. For instance, the
investor responsible for the new Slovak National Archive sought
architecture in the spirit of the contemporary building of Matica
slovenská in Martin (by Dušan Kuzma – Anton Cimmermann,
competition project 1961–1962, realization 1963–1975) rather
than complicated connection to or renovation of the capital’s
various historical structures.
Years of preparations led to the government’s proposal, through
the Slovak parliament’s schools and culture commission on
28 December 1962, to build on the historical Water Barracks,
directing the responsible minister Vasil Bil’ak to begin preparations
and include the construction in the budget. Based on this
the SNG’s director, Dr. Karol Vaculík, called for an initial proposal
(comparison study) to build Vladimír Dedeček’s southern,
Danube-oriented wing onto the barracks. In 1962 Dedeček submitted
a first alternative for the wing, as a Le Corbusier-esque
functionalist building on pilotis with open parterre and a flat roof.
Here the exhibition floors were not lined up, but rather shifted
in two directions, such that natural light from above illuminated
them / see architectural interpretation, p. 76, pict. B /.
The architects’ association Sväz slovenských architektov
(SSA), drawing on Bratislava’s urban planning guidelines, extended
Vaculík’s program to include building an entire city
block; in 1963 they compiled a study for the gallery’s addition
and renovation (THURZO 1978, p. 4). Four groups were invited to propose:
one under Jaroslav Fragner of Prague’s Academy of Fine
Arts architecture school; under Eugen Kramár of Stavoprojekt
Košice; under Martin Beňuška and Štefánia Rosincová of both
22

Bratislava’s chief architect’s office and Stavoprojekt Bratislava;
and finally X. ateliér vysokoškolských a kultúrnych stavieb under
Vladimír Dedeček of Stavoprojekt Bratislava.
The selection of comparative studies consulted with the association
differed from the standard architectural competition
in that the SSA association’s commission was able to consult
the studies with the four groups when they created them, then
compare them continuously and ultimately announce a winner.
Thus there was in fact a two-round consultative selection process
ending in a vote. Vladimír Dedeček’s study was chosen:
there was a first alternative for the site (with a second alternative
for the southern wing adjacent the Danube on pilotis), expanded
to include completion of a city block with an outdoor terraced
sculptured gallery to the north, toward the historic core. The SSA
commission was chaired by Štefan Svetko, then the director of
Bratislava’s chief architect’s office; the other members were
Alojz Dařiček, Ján Steller, L’ubomír Titl and Milan Škorupa. 16
In the sense of this “consultative selection by voting”, the architect
Dedeček’s introduction to the project’s text distinctively noted:
“This study’s working method is discussion. The discussion’s
individual phases and arguments are present in the visual material...”
(DEDEČEK 1963, p. 1). This formulation, and archive documents
on the commission’s work, make clear that the consultations
yielded a first concept for the area, considered fitting by both
commission and investor for preparing the investment plan and
an initial project. Vladimír Dedeček consulted the subsequent
investment plan (approved in 1965) and initial project (approved
15 An oft-cited text by Dr. Martin Kusý stressed as much: KUSÝ,
Martin – GRÁCOVÁ, Genovéva. Slovenská národná galéria.
Slovensko, 1, 1977, vol. 3, pp. 4–5.
16 See the SSA minutes Zápisnica z 1. konzultácie posudzovacieho
sboru so spracovatel’mi študijnej úlohy na doriešenie SNG
v Bratislave, konanej dň a 17. septembra 1963 na sekretariáte
SSA v Bratislave. Typewritten, p. 2. In: Fond Karol Vaculík.
Archív výtvarného umenia SNG. See also Záverečný protokol
from the assessment of studies, dated 16 December 1963,
3-4 and 6 January 1964, at the SSA secretariat. Typewritten,
p. 9. In: Fond Karol Vaculík, Archív výtvarného umenia SNG.
23

in 1968) in 1966–1967 with the gallery director Dr. Vaculík, who
considerably influenced the project’s character. This was a longterm
working discussion between the architect and those who
commissioned and financed the construction, and also included
other architects and city planners selected by the SSA.
The next step in building this gradually-designed and -consulted
national gallery project was inclusion in investment
budget planning and allocation of finances. Dr. Vaculík and the
associations of Slovak and Czech artists – like other investors
of prestigious buildings of national significance – several times
requested government and state leaders for financial assistance
to launch and maintain the gallery construction. 17
Later the architect, in part responding to criticism, was to call
the first alternative, with the second alternative for the Danube
wing on pilotis, “... sober, and let us say to some extent conservative.”
(DEDEČEK, undated [1975], p. 3). For all that, a pilotis construction
was being placed next to Belluš’ 20 th century classicized functionalist
hotel, with its terrace near the Danube. The floors were
shifted in two directions, so as to benefit from top lighting and
give the extensive wing a broken-field bulk and mass: “The technical
purpose endows the mass with a plastic tone. The steel
construction makes this solution possible.” (DEDEČEK 1967, p. 1)
Dedeček harmonized the new solution to the construction and
mass/spatial issues of the exhibition spaces in the Danube wing
with the Hotel Devín to the west and the Esterházy palace to the
east by means of several contextual choices: through respecting
the new line of the street, the height of Esterházy palace
gabling, the modernizing scale of Hotel Devín, and a design of
an analogous facade – for like Belluš’ hotel, the gallery project
was meant to be faced with stone from the Spišské Podhradie
travertine field.
The architect had first tried out staggered storeys in connection
with top natural lighting for the classrooms and teacher
rooms in the Secondary economics school / 33-class economics
school building on Ulica Februárového vít’azstva (now the
24

Obchodná akadémia on Račianska). The arrangement of mass
and space in this school was thus a foretaste of the Danube
wing gallery exhibition space and a turning point in the context of
the architect’s later work. In working with daylight for the top and
combined interior lighting, which directly influenced the differentiation
of the buildings individual storeys, the architect was responding
to the other zones and buildings around. Interestingly,
he developed the idea to a large extent in the partially-realized
project of Forestry and wood processing university in Zvolen,
in the unbuilt central university library building.
Even in his first alternatives for the SNG completion, Dedeček
emphasized a series of interior and exterior “gallery squares”, and
their relation to “town squares”. It was these urban “art exhibition
environments” of Dedeček’s that enfolded the individual gallery
building wings, and opened up the compact barracks block,
17 SNG archives have preserved a letter from Dr. Vaculík to the
culture minister Miroslav Válek dated 31 October 1969, in which
he requests the minister to “... intervene energetically and assist
in this matter”. Typewritten, 3 pages. In: Fond Karol Vaculík. Archív
výtvarného umenia SNG. [In it, Vaculík explains to Válek the crisis
of the threatening halt of the incomplete construction, and the
disproportion between the real costs and the underestimated
first phase budget (made so the investment could be held to
under 40 mil., meaning the Slovak culture ministry – back before
the Federation was established – would not have to get approval
from the “Prague government”). He also informed the minister
that Comrades Peter Colotka and Július Hanus had promised to
arrange for the project to be included at the soonest government
cabinet meeting. Similarly, Comrade Štefan Šebesta, minister
for construction and technology, promised to help Vaculík. At the
same time, it was noted a delegation of functionaries from the
association of Czech and Slovak artists had “some time ago”
discussed the issue of the President of the Republic. The President
(Antonín Novotný until March 1968, then Jozef Lenárt as Acting
President from 22–30 March, and Ludvík Svoboda from March
1968) proposed linking the construction of the National gallery
in Prague and in Bratislava in one nationwide undertaking, so as to
finance it from the Republic Fund. Vaculík considered this feasible.
By then the steel bridge had been commissioned and mostly
built (cost 10 mil. Kčs), with a planned delivery to the building site
of early 1970. Vaculík was appealing to Válek that construction
not be halted, as this would misspend invested financies, and the
painstakingly assembled structure of suppliers would collapse .]
25

with its central square, to a field of checkerboard-like differentiated
environments with a variety of levels and means of moving
around (covered walkways, passages, loggias, stairways, ramps,
raised pedestals/plinths, rooftop terraces, walkable roofs and
so forth). Such urban links at diverse heights made it possible
to perceive the art, the site and the city from varying elevations:
it even afforded views of adjacent riverfront buildings, the river,
the streets of the historical city core, and the growing city space
on the other bank of the Danube.
The purpose of a gallery site area so designed was both
to provide for indoor exhibitions in the gallery’s own buildings,
but to connect them to outdoor exhibitions “in among” buildings,
on them and under them, in open passageways. Thus it
was not just Dedeček’s buildings themselves that enabled and
enclosed the exhibition space, but vice versa too: Dedeček’s
urban exposition environment in public space turned the gallery
into an indoor-outdoor art exhibit along the river. It could be said
that the site stimulated the relationships between the outdoor
modern sculpture exhibits and the plasticity of late modern
architecture; it could also be said that the site as it was designed
with consideration for exhibiting historical and modern
sculpture right in the city, even anticipating exhibition of new
types and genres of art: environments and installations in situ
alongside series and accumulations of artworks. The summer
amphitheatre brought in the cinematic art. So this was a comprehensive
and innovative urbanist/architectural space, intended
even for new audio-visual arts, accessible in a new urbanist/
architectural situation. However, in the 1980s, after Dr. Vaculík
was removed from the gallery’s leadership and the construction
was completed, the spaces were not utilized as variably and
innovatively as the site’s urban/architectural plan envisioned.
Using the gallery area’s system of interior and exterior walkways,
ramps and stairways, the public could walk from and to the riverfront
to Štúrovo or Hviezdoslavovo námestie. A system of buildings
thus designed, and their interstices, is an exquisitely urban
26

gallery, a public space of multiple focal points, with focal points
linked and even crisscrossed. Any effort by the gallery’s administrators
or renovators to “enclose” the gallery as designed, to
fill its “gallery squares” with indoor exhibit spaces, would run
counter to the gallery’s concept of a distributed and crisscrossing
plan; to use Aldo van Eyck’s phrase, counter to the “labyrinthine
clarity” of its indoor and outdoor walkways, spaces and
interstitial spaces.
Seen in this light, the group of gallery buildings and their
public spaces constitute a high point in Dedeček’s program to
dislocate the urban mono-block (in urbanist and architectural
terms) into a cluster that he had begun to formulate and prove
as a counterpart to tried and true compositional approaches
in primary and secondary schools, and continued in later university
areas. The opened raster of SNG spaces is one – and
the meandering pavilions of the Comenius University Natural
Science faculty in Bratislava-Mlynská dolina another – of these
interpretations: another of Dedeček’s solutions to his self-assigned
task of rethinking relations between urban architectural
openness and closedness. Ultimately, the interconnection of
gallery and public space in the SNG project was not to change,
from its earliest proposed alternatives through a fragmentary
realization, despite the turbulent metamorphosis of the whole.
A group of experts of the culture and information ministry gave
approval to the introductory project as prepared (the first alternative
for the area and the second alternative for the southern
wing) in 1967: Professors Emil Belluš and Vladimír Karfík, the
architect and urban planner Štefan Svetko, the construction engineer
Jozef Harvančík and the architect Anton Cimmerman (Jozef
Lacko excused himself). 18 Of their decision, Vladimír Dedeček
wrote: “In scale and material we accommodated primarily to
the principles applied in realizing Hotel Devín. The technical
and financial council of the culture ministry, which included
[H]otel Devín’s architect Prof. Belluš, opposed this as some-
18 / see p. 29 /
27

thing that had been outlived in the current rapid developments
in architecture.” (DEDEČEK, undated, p. 4) In other words, this group in
July 1967 was already considering Dedeček’s five-year-old conception
for the SNG front wing on pilotis as a thing outdated,
and called for its innovation. This shows the dynamic changes
in architectural thinking in 1960s Slovakia. In his expert opinion
on construction of the SNG addition, Jozef Harvančík stated:
“... from the perspective of construction, the project features
a desirable unity between technological conception and architectural
expression that is noteworthy for our age. On these
grounds I advocate project approval.” 19 In his opinion, Marián
Marcinka commented mainly on the tall research/administrative
building: “The effort at freeing up the ground level is a worthy
aspect of the design: detaching the mass from engineering
networks, and trying to overlap indoor and outdoor spaces
at ground level; and the liberating maintaining of the gallery’s
individuality and retaining of spatial association between the
current gallery and the river bank... Interesting and resourceful,
too, is the conception of mass of the exhibition portion
from the banks of the Danube, with a calming, dignified and
monumental effect. However, I cannot rid myself of the feeling
that there is still a detail missing overall, something that
would bring everything together... The administration building’s
material solution, and its indoor spatial layout, is not convincing,
seeming not to attain the quality of the other portions, and
fails to come up to the solution of the whole. There is a kind
of incongruity of architectural emphasis on the height of something
that in its content is less essential (administration, photo
lab, residences and the like). I do not think the gallery should
show its architectural authority by emphasizing its height.” 20
Marcinka’s opinion recommended approval, along with setting
interim deadlines for reacting to such suggestions.
A third opinion of an unidentified institution, with unidentified
signature, expressed similar reservations: “The construction
overall is logical in terms of operations and disposition, as it
builds on the existing structure and in a fitting manner places
28

the individual functional units (exhibition spaces, so-called
administrative block, and garages). Automobile and pedestrian
transport is optimally resolved, as are the proposed entrances
to each unit. The garage’s location and architectural concept
is especially good. What is debatable is the material solution
of ‘administrative’ operations; and the architectural material
completion of Phase I of construction remains an unresolved
problem – i.e. that which is the subject of actual building work,
and its relations to existing well-preserved residential houses
on the corner by Hotel Devín. We cannot agree with the implicit
cutting off of volumes by the attic walls.” 21 This third opinion’s
conclusion included no final evaluation as to approval.
18 See enclosures to Dr. Karol Vaculík's letter to Vladimír Dedeček of
4 September 1967, typewritten, 19 p. It features the expert opinions
of Jozef Harvančík and Marián Marcinka, and a third opinion from
an unspecified institution with an unidentified signature. It also
includes the opinion of Slovakia's historical sites institute with
an unidentified director's signature [at the time, the director was
Ing. arch. Ján Lichner, CSc.]. All these documents are copies of
originals. In: Fond Karol Vaculík. Archív výtvarného umenia SNG.
Because this was a new introductory project, the group of experts
recommended a new appraisal of the second alternative, which was
to take place at the ministry's administrative/technical commission
on 1 August 1967. They additionally requested an opinion from
the construction concern Pozemné stavby, národný podnik
Bratislava, and the chief architect's office in Bratislava. Neither
Dedeček nor the experts participated in these proceedings.
Those present were: Dr. Karol Vaculík, František Baláž, and
Ján Matúšek on behalf of the investor; Viktor Faktor, chief
of operations for the lead architect, Dedeček's studio X. ateliér;
Jozef Vaňko for Slovakia's construction commission; and
Ing. arch. Marcinková, Ing. Šurinová, Ing. Magdalík, Ing. Ján Fišer
and Milan Jankovský, for the culture ministry. The commission
recommended approval of the developed introductory project.
In: Fond Karol Vaculík. Archív výtvarného umenia SNG.
19 HARVANČÍK, Jozef. Posudok konštrukcií v Úvodnom projekte
Slovenskej národnej galérie v Bratislave pre Povereníctvo kultúry
a informácií. 10 July 1967, typewritten, 3 p. In: Príloha listu
Karola Vaculíka Vladimírovi Dedečkovi, 4 September 1967,
typewritten, 19 p. Ibidem.
20 MARCINKA, Marián. Vyjadrenie k úvodnému projektu
na prístavbu Slovenskej národnej galérie v Bratislave.
Undated, typewritten, 3 p. Ibidem.
21 [unspecified institution] Vyjadrenie k PÚ-SNG. 30 June 1967,
typewritten, 4 p. Ibidem.
29

The commission discussed these expert opinions with the
architect on 1 July, and 14 July 1967 was set as deadline for
checking on project adjustments. Dedeček, responding to the
opinions and the discussion, prepared over these 14 days a new
alternative design (second area alternative, with third alternative
for the Danube wing). In his new Technical report he stated:
“Comrade Ing. arch. Svetko expressed reservations to the 4 m
under-passage under the mass of exhibit spaces [i.e. to the
colonnade in the Danube wing parterre], which in his opinion
did not sufficiently visually connect the Taranda spaces with the
riverbank’s; further, compared to the architectural solution of
enclosing the SNG atrium with the new building, the proposal
is not sufficiently organic.” 22 Dedeček reacted by raising the
space under the Danube wing, creating: “... a 3-level bridge in
front of the current [historical building’s] SNG, enabling visual
connection between viewers by the Danube and the entire
SNG space, which would then be visible up to the cornice
(given that the courtyard vegetation so allows). The height of
the opening [under the bridging is now] approximately 7.80 m.
There are no supports in this space, enhancing the perception
of the courtyard. (...) A courtyard spectator sees the new and
old roofs at almost the same angle. This also improves the access
of sunlight to the atrium; at the same time, this change
reduces the total floor space, and one level is eliminated by
increasing the opening. (...) Though the experts’ suggestions
are at odds with the opinion of the jury and the advisory body of
studies [of the architects’ association], I accept them because
they reduce expenses, which in this situation will seem beneficial.
I believe this had led me to a more interesting conception,
with a similar volume composition for all sections.” 23
Thus the Danube wing’s new space and arrangement came
about through elimination of the lowest storeys, and a new
conception of design of exposition spaces (the 3-storey wing
became an open hall divided into 3 levels of ascending walkways).
This new design also called for a new steel construction
free of middle supports. The composition of the “bridging’s”
30

arrangement into the riverfront, on the one hand, is the result
of earlier solutions of sandwiched storeys, and on the other is
a new diagonal bevelling resulting from the contours of sunlight
coming into the space under the “bridging”. I.e., this was not just
a matter of keeping to the construction/physical diagram of the
lighting, which might be architecturally interpreted variously. The
diagonal bevelling form is moreover an indication of the steel
bridge structure’s ability to carry the spaces with no central
supports, such that the parterres are opened, with no shadowing,
and no blocking of pedestrians from the street, all while
providing a new layer above ground and air of urban functions,
right in the historical core, with all its usual density of habitation
and construction... In other words, the SNG bridging, frequently
regarded as an “expressive” or even “aggressive” form, is in
fact exquisitely urban, in that it leaves open and accessible the
courtyard space in the parterre, in this sense a form “social” and
cultured. And this is the cultural and civilizational sense of the
word urban – i.e. the cultural and social emancipation of the city
from the nature-bound inevitability of respecting the action of
natural forces. But this bridging quality can be seen and appreciated
only if the citizens look not just at what the gallery bridge
dismantled and halted, but also at what it to the contrary did
not halt, at what it carries and how it rounds out the Bratislava
riverfront. The modern bridging of the historical structure comes
to the forefront if we look at the very nature of the public space
it helps to shape and supplement, and not just as a thing in itself
with its demolished predecessors. Based on the expert opinions,
the architect lowered the administrative building from the
requested 8 storeys to the current 6, and finished the structure
with a flat walkable roof with skylights for the restoration studios
and a tall attic with a Le Corbusier-esque “window” toward the
castle and the opposite river bank.
22 DEDEČEK, Vladimír. Technická správa k alternatívnemu riešeniu
ÚP SNG. 11 June 1967. typewritten, 2 p. In: Fond Vladimír Dedeček,
Zbierka architektúry, úžitkového umenia a dizajnu SNG.
23 Ibidem, p. 1.
31

In late 1969, i.e. after Czechoslovakia’s occupation by Warsaw
Pact armies, a newly-named expert commission evaluated the
resulting alternative based on project documentation.
A new opinion from the preservation institute, with an unreadable
signature (Ing. arch. Ján Lichner, Csc. was then director),
reproached the lack of consultation with that institute on
the new design, created in 14 days. For this reason the institute
refused to give an overall position, expressing itself only “... from
the limited perspective of preserving cultural heritage sites as
registered by the state. Referring to the opinion of 11 January
1965 we have no objections in principle to the solution of the
new addition’s integration into the historical cultural site, though
we are not expressing any opinion on the proposed architecture.
Because of generally known technical circumstances, and the
fact that the historical portion’s interior disposition and vaulting
system has already been interrupted, we do not demand a strict
preservation of vaulting on the west wing’s upper floor. However
we ask that the courtyard’s facade expression with its central
feature of a suggested building (chapel 24 ) be preserved, and
the vaulting system of the arcaded corridors. In conclusion, we
hold that from the perspective of preserving cultural heritage
there are no objections in principle to the project submitted, and
we agree with the given request.” 25 As in the previous opinion,
there was no request here that there be a larger view through the
courtyard to the historical building arcades.
Interestingly, Dedeček’s study from back in 1963 included
a view into the courtyard, at the height of one storey; the first
SSA association commission chairman Štefan Svetko consistently
advocated for two things throughout the evaluation: a view
through to the building and eventually an enlarged view – along
with a newer, more contemporary expression of the facing wing
(!), something that by the late 1960s corresponded not just to
Belluš’ classicized functionalist hotel, or to Le Corbusier’s five
points of modern architecture, or to Dedeček’s own program of
dissipating the mono-block, but rather to the dynamic of transformations
in late 1960s architecture in Europe and the world.
32

The second group of experts thus late in 1969 essentially
merely confirmed the discussion between Dedeček, Cimmermann,
Harvančík, Marcinka, Svetko, Karfík and Belluš on
completing the SNG, of which only partial records have been
archived. These discussions played a formative role in the later
1960s in the project’s metamorphosis. Thanks in part to them,
during the design phase the construction departed from one
stage of late modern architecture in Slovakia, and moved into
another: some would now call it communistic, totalitarian and
“normalizing”, while others consider it a variation or derivation
of what was happening in architecture internationally, especially
in Europe. For the former group, it is most particularly a mirror
image of the politics of the socialistic “normalization” of the city
and the state; for the latter, it is was reaction to the example set
by 1960s architecture internationally, on the other side of the
iron curtain – usually without considering Dedeček’s long-term,
systematic development of how he looked at architecture and
architectural design of SNG / see Textual Interpretation of Compositional and
Clustering Arrangements, p. 55–65 /.
Module, construction, volume, surfacing
The subterranean construction of additions to the historical
building are of ferro-concrete, and those above ground
are atypically steel-based. Regarding the bridging, “... this
is a kind of three-level steel bridge of framed joists, laid on
2 abutments, fixed and socketed”. (DEDEČEK – PIEKERT 1968, p. 2.) The
administrative building was designed as “... a steel, five-floored
[i.e. six- storeyed] frame with consoled, phased shifting of the
forefront toward Hotel Devín, with a brick cladding”. (DEDEČEK –
PIEKERT – ORAVCOVÁ 1971, p. 1.) The steel construction is walled-in.
24 Other historians, such as Dr. Štefan Holčík, opine that this remnant
was the smaller tower with “commandants” balcony.
25 [SUPSOP] Vyjadrenie k vykonávaciemu projektu na prístavbu
a rekonštrukciu budovy SNG v Bratislave. 21 November 1969,
typewritten, 2 p. (cited in Note 14).
33

The ceiling is of waved metal plates, and the stairway is of steel
faced with marble.
The construction has a gravel foundation; the ground water
level was lowered using two wells.
Otokar Pečený of Mostáreň Brezno designed the structural
engineering of all the above-ground, i.e. steel construction;
based on this contract, he became an employee of Dedeček’s
studio X. Ateliér, and took the main role in designing construction
of Dedeček’s later steel structures, especially the culture/sports
hall in Ostrava. He also designed the structure of the depository
racks/shelving (“depository coulisse of steel construction” DEDEČEK 1968, p. 2),
again manufactured by Mostáreň Brezno.
The load-bearing system of the bridging is in four girders on two
30 cm-wide abutments at a distance of 54.5 m. One of these
is fixed, the other socketed, allowing tensibility of the construction.
The lowest of the three cascading levels in the bridging is
suspended on bottom bands of the lowest-situated girders. The
upper two levels are placed on the upper bands of the girders.
Thus the main construction combines support and suspension.
The roofing, including the glassed ceilings, is supported by
crossbeam on the upper bands of the upper girder (toward the
river) and of the lowest girder (toward the courtyard). This means
the individual levels are each supported by a single girder, with
the other securing stability in case of unbalanced loading.
The bridging’s floors are of ribbed metal plates 6 mm thick,
reinforced on top with braces poured over with a 6 cm layer
of concrete. This created solid flat elements, able to take both
perpendicular loading and the entire horizontal force in a lateral
system of abutments, while stabilizing the pressed bands of the
girders. Auxiliary stairways and an elevator are situated to the
sides of the abutment.
The topmost girder has a cornice (console) on both sides. To
the east, toward the former Dom Československo- sovietskeho
priatel’stva (now Esterházy palace of the SNG), the girder is
34

corniced at about 11 m (11.06 m), and to the west, toward
Belluš’ Hotel Devín it is laid at about 8 m (7.6 m). The load
of the framed walls – the levels’ supporting elements – is on
both of the corniced ends (DEDEČEK undated, pp. 5–6). In addition to
the corniced construction, there are further auxiliary constructions
(towers) at the sections at the edge. The total length of the
bridging construction is therefore 73.5 m.
The steel bridge thus designed can carry the three floors –
terraced walkways (receding upwards by more than half of the
floor plan surface) with a view of the entire height of exhibition
space toward the roof daylight from the north. White artificial
lighting using halogen bulbs is built into the ceiling of each
walkway/terrace. Artworks can be installed flexibly in the open
three-level longitudinal, thanks to a system of partitions tracked
on the ceiling and floor of all three levels. Movable partitions are
stackable by the bridging’s western side wall.
The space, tall and rising, white and cascading, is 54.5 m long,
with diffuse top daylight as supplemented with artificial halogen
lighting. It was designed mainly for installation and viewing of modern
art works. An unrealized gallery of temporary exhibitions, over
the main entry by Hotel Devín, was intended to serve contemporary
art. In the variable space of the segmentable “white cascading
prism”, modern pieces can be installed without frames and
pedestals, in cycles or other accumulations, such that the space
becomes their continuation. It does not create unchangeable spatial
fields, whether hierarchized or not. (Presently in renovation).
In addition to the exhibition spaces in the bridging, and the
small depositories in the historical building’s garret, the main
depository spaces were situated underground for space management
– there are two storeys of depositories under the
administrative wing, and one under the bridging; diaphragm
walls protect against ground water leakage (anchored by steel
cables in the ground along the external perimeter), using sealed
internal surfaces. 26
26 Waterproof expanding mortar Waterplug with cement-based Thoroseal.
35

The architect’s second alternative for the southern wing anticipated
cladding, for the administrative and bridging structures,
of white and red glass mosaic tile (from the firm Jablonecká
bižutéria: white no. 937 and red no. 1561) and facing of slate
(from Moravské ště rkovny and pískovny Olomouc); for the third
alternative, he designed an alternative facing of anodized steel
from Hunter Douglas (with “golden”, or more precisely bronze,
finishing). However for reasons of time and finances the cladding
was realized in the winter using “dry assembly” of siporex
panels, quickly finished with profiled enameled aluminium plates
(with white and red enamel). The bridging’s abutments and the
administration’s parterre are faced with gray-black slate (the design
featured facing the abutments at ground level with black
marble; not realized).
Thus the architect had to adjust to rapid “winter assembly” of
the facades and their surfaces, so the first stage of construction
(the Danube gallery wing) could be put into use on the occasion
of the 29th anniversary of The 1948 Czechoslovak coup d’état
and the 29th anniversary of the SNG’s founding. This is why
he chose the “temporary” installation of a metal facing, in part
because the material corresponded to the architectural character
of the building’s facing wing: “It may seem too unusual to
use such surfacing material, but they are the expression of the
current material and technological circumstances, and reflect
the current progress and condition of industrial manufacturing.
So there is no reason they ought not to become significant
media for modern architecture. This is especially so if it is architecture
that in no way reminds us of preceding developmental
phases of architecture in our country. Interiors, too, use equally
new materials 27 .” (DEDEČEK undated [1975], p. 7)
The indoor white cement masonry was designed to have
a surface layer of crushed white marble (supplied by Umelecké
remeslá; not realized). The atypical glass windows, doors and
walls were supplied by the state-run Sklounion Teplice, ZUKOV
in Prague and the collective Umeleckých remesiel.
36

The atypical portions of the interior, in particular the raised auditorium
seating of light wood, the profiled acoustic wall cladding
and the paned wooden acoustic ceiling, with the cinema hall
lighting and sound system, was realized according to the design
of Jaroslav Nemec. He also designed the built-in wooden
office furniture (with built-in cabinet configuration including sink
and closet space). He designed low seating for the exhibit hall
(square upholstered, with out armrests covered in black leather,
on metal legs and a solid square base) and square wooden tables
with laminated surface on an analogous metal base (the collective
Umeleckých remesiel also participated in making this furniture).
Nemec’s design for the secretariat interior, meeting rooms,
offices and director’s suite underwent major changes. For the
offices and director’s suite he designed atypical white wood
wall covering in columns, with white console desks in various
orthogonal shapes, dimensions and heights, which with the
white surfacing and lighting panels made for a “single whole,
in construction and architecture”, accented with black and light
wood surfaces; it was a customized, partly “built-in interior” for
the 1960s, modified in the late 1970s, and it went unrealized.
Also unrealized was his customized “diagram table” (NEMEC 1978,
p. 3). The spaces were furnished with atypical office furniture of
light wood, and manufactured seating from the ALFA series, by
the state firm Turčan in Martin.
Classification
Form/style : A short review by Jozef Liščák did not categorize
the building in style or form. The review concerned itself roughly
equally with stages I and II of the construction as well as the
27 The architect was mainly referring to panelling (Izomín),
sprayed-on surfacing (Dikoplast) and floor surfaces (Izofloor),
in support of the stone flooring of public gallery spaces.
IZOMÍN came from the IZOMAT plant in Nová Baňa; these are
hard insulation panels of mineral fibre with strong fireproofing
resistance. The Swedish firm Junkers supplied the technology;
they started producing in Slovakia in 1973.
37

unbuilt stages III and IV. The (future) SNG renovation and
addition was regarded as a single whole. He even regarded
the facade facing as provisional, and stressed the stone cover
design of the facing wing and the administrative building:
“The colouring of the temporary metal outside cladding is problematic...
The final facade treatment – a stone facing with a cultivated
structure and colouring anticipated – will favourably
round out the architectural aspect of the SNG complex. It will
unify and underline the rich architectural plasticity, with maximum
effectuation of monumentality.” (LIŠČÁK 1981, pp. 4–5.)
Another reviewer was the new gallery director Štefan Mruškovič
(serving 1975–1990; Dr. Karol Vaculík was not allowed to
remain in his position even for the opening of the structure he had
worked so vitally to bring about). In his mid-1970s review, this
successor to Vaculík recounted critical voices from among gallery
visitors and employees: criticism ranging from how the historical
barracks building was supplemented, through the construction’s
architectural resolution and the bridging’s outdoor appearance,
even to the atrium’s plinth, the incongruity of the building’s indoor
entry spaces (small), and the inconvenience (undersized) of the
stairways, along with the construction’s technical shortcomings.
Similarly to Liščák, Mruškovič noted that this was just a fragment
of the whole solution, a recapitulation phase in Dedeček’s
design; he did not note the contributions of individuals to decision-making
(he nowhere mentioned Dr. Vaculík) or the changes
forced onto the project. Finally he concluded: “Our experience
has shown that the opinions and impressions of everyday SNG
visitors often differ quite diametrically. The critical voices that at
first absolutely rejected the addition’s solution and its surfacing
are no longer so strong, now that the SNG has been built and
opened..., although much of the public still has not accepted the
building’s most basic construction and architecture... But there
are also some who praise the uniqueness of the building’s modernity
and construction...” As the incoming director, he valued
the ability to install artworks in the “free” halls, and in a cascaded
space with diffuse lighting (MRUŠKOVIČ 1981, pp. 6–7).
38

In 1982, in an article summarizing the state of Slovakia’s architecture,
Dr. Martin Kusý publically addressed the discussion on
the SNG: “The stump of the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava
that was realized on the riverbank was, without regard
to how much was known of the overall aim, quite sharply condemned.
Few would then allow that the solution of the exhibition
spaces was optimal, with excellent technical parameters
and a smooth connection to the old building, which is entirely
visible from the riverbank. The artistic comprehension that
irritates the public is focused on the large coloured surfaces
that modulate to the scale and vital pulsing betokened by the
neighbouring bridge and the heavy traffic. Most importantly,
it is still to be completed.” (KUSÝ 1982 /?/, p.?) The same year,
Tibor Zalčík and Matúš Dulla included the building in the book
Slovenská architektúra 1976–1980, in the “Massiveness of
form and shape” chapter, with more recent reviews and historiography
on the gallery, mainly in connection with the discussion
on the monumental in modern and/or socialistic architecture.
In 2001, Imro Vaško attempted to emancipate the SNG site
from locally ensconced classifications, citing Breuer’s Whitney
Museum in New York and putting the SNG in its own class of
“sculpturalism”: “The aggressive expression in both of these
architectures is no accident, it corresponds to the sculptural
tendencies of the sixties. There is no question of the period’s
brutality here, as both buildings work with, there is no recognition
of the construction materials of [Le] Corbusier and [Paul]
Rudolph’s handling of architectural concrete.” 28
Foreign architects and reviewers joined the discussion on
the character of the SNG bridging only in the new century
and millennium. The Austrian reviewer M. Hötzl – as cited in
the thesis by Tatiana Krasňanská – refers to the coarse, raw
( brachial) quality of the bridging as left-over from the modern:
28 VAŠKO, Imro. Paralely. New Ends alebo Čo nového
v New Yorských chrámoch umenia... a na Slovensku
(Boom galerijného Disneylandu). Projekt. Revue slovenskej
architektúry, 43, 2001, vol. 2, p. 25.
39

“Doch gerade durch diese brachiale Verkleidung wirkt die
große Struktur und stellt ein Meisterwerk dar, das längst
über die Moderne hinausgewachsen ist.” / “And by this very
instrumentality of this brachial encasement, the large structure
impresses, and represents a masterpiece that has far outgrown
the modern”. 29
In 2005 the Dutch architect Willem Jan Neutellings,
together with members of the Academy of Fine Arts architecture
department, symbolically founded the Slovak Institute
for the Preservation of Communist Monumental Architecture
Heritage. Dedeček’s completion of the SNG site is one
of three initial pieces he includes. He thereby symbolically
places this construction in the context of European communist
monumental architecture.
Sign/Symbolic : Any place the gallery’s Danube is discussed
as bridging or a bridge, it is being treated as an ostensible indication
of a bridge, or a bridge/building, and simultaneously as
an elementary sign (based on the external similarities to bridge
structure, and on the causal link of the structure with building
form). Indeed “bridging” is a technical term, which has come to
stand for the whole gallery site and expresses one of its main
architectural themes.
The current gallery director Alexandra Kusá gave an interview
in association with “various symbols” with a visitor (with a cameraman
of a film about the gallery) who still sees the SNG bridging,
now temporarily painted gray, as a “red monstrosity”. 30 This “red
monstrosity” stands for the bridging because of the period’s
ideas of something huge, amorphous and frightful, which might
serve as an allegorical epithet for the regime with no human face.
After the bridging was put into use, the side surfaces (“crosscut
edges”) were red with an “indented” bevelled facade (to be
precise, the lower edges of the indentation, as seen from below).
The facing surfaces were white, as in many of Dedeček’s educational
buildings before and after. The roof was partly glassed.
Thus the bridging could become a “red monstrosity” mainly for
40

a pedestrian or viewer who looked at it from the side, or from
a “worm’s eye view” that ignored the white and black surfaces.
The SNG’s extra-architectural symbolism is, compared to
other works, restrained. The site mainly takes on meanings within
architecture by means of iconic signs from a variety of historical
architectural forms. The public often reads extra-architectural
symbols, or iconic symbols, into this area site.
Relationship of form/style and sign/symbolic classification :
Typical figures are formed by the individual abstract, non-figural
forms of the SNG addition, which is one of its characteristic
features. This means it oscillates between categorizations
stylistic and extra-stylistic, sign and non-sign architecture.
The signs that come to the forefront here are mainly indexical,
while the iconic and symbolic remain more opaque or covered
over with the aforementioned pseudo-symbols.
There are many hybrids of symbols and invectives in circulation.
One of these analogized the bridging as the Old
Testament’s “red cow” to be sacrificed for the sin of adoring
the golden calf; at the time the red cow of sin (of collapsing
communism) was transforming into the white colour of innocence
(oncoming democracy)... It could also be a reference to
the “ Uncensored newspaper You Red Cow” (Necenzurované
noviny Ty rudá krávo), 31 which the Brno political commentator
Petr Cibulka published starting in 1991, parodying the rhyme
with the Communist Party’s newspaper Rudé právo. In 1992
he published a list of secret police counter-intelligence
collaborationists (“ Cibulka’s list”).
In 2008 in her text “Múzeum ako časová a receptívna architektúra”,
Jarmila Bencová pondered the SNG addition and the
29 HÖTZL, M. Bratislava im Porträt. Forum, 2003, vol. 23, p. 2.
See also KRASŇANSKÁ, Tatiana. Kompozičné princípy v tvorbe
architekta Vladimíra Dedečka (thesis). Advised by Marián Zervan.
FF Trnavskej univerzity v Trnave, 2008, 70 p.
30 KUSÁ, Alexandra. Výzva za červenú. Úvaha nad obkladovým
materiálom budovy SNG. Arch, 13, 2008, vol. 5, pp. 34–37.
31 See also the library collection Libri Prohibiti in Prague.
41

associated project of reconstruction and completion, to use
Michel Foucault’s terminology – in the context of his thoughts
on any archives as being the modernistic will to enclose, in one
place, all times, all epochs, all the alterations in taste, and then
to put them outside of time and its ravages. She characterized
the gallery and its addition as “... heterotopy and hetero chrony
in a compromised form”. 32 She thus formulated an interpretation
basis that is so far unique, from which she views the structure
as a relationship of various architectural and artistic times
and spaces, without categorizing it in terms of form/style or
emblem/symbol.
42

Literature
(01) VACULÍK, Karol. Skutočnost’ Slovenskej národnej Galérie. Výtvarný život, 2,
1957, vol. 3, pp. 76–82.
(02) BELLUŠ, Emil. Budovat’ slovenskú národnú galériu. Výtvarný život, 2,
1957, vol. 3, pp. 91–94.
(03) DEDEČEK, Vladimír. Dostavba SNG v Bratislave. Študijná úloha SSA, 1963.
Textová čast’. In: Fond Karol Vaculík, Archív výtvarného umenia SNG.
(04) DEDEČEK, Vladimír. Technická správa k ÚP SNG – Bratislava. Signovaná
Dedeček, dated 15 March 1967, typewritten, 1 p. In: Oddelenie správy budov SNG.
(05) DEDEČEK, Vladimír. C 1
Technická správa k realizačnému projektu. Výstavná
čast’. Signovaná Dedeček, Piekert. Dated 15 December 1968, typewritten,
3 p. In: Oddelenie správy budov SNG.
(06) DEDEČEK, Vladimír. C 1
Technická správa k realizačnému projektu. Vedeckohospodársky
objekt. Signovaná Dedeček, Piekert, Oravcová. Dated May 1971,
typewritten, 5 p. In: Oddelenie správy budov SNG.
(07) DEDEČEK, Vladimír. Poznámky k otázkam výstavby areálu SNG v Bratislave.
Typewritten, 8 p. In: Fond Vladimír Dedeček, Zbierka architektúry, úžitkového
umenia a dizajnu SNG. Part of this text was published as: DEDEČEK, Vladimír.
Zaujímavý objekt na dunajskom nábreží v Bratislave. Nová tvár Slovenskej
národnej galérie. Technické noviny, 23, 1975, vol. 14, p. (?).
(08) NEMEC, Jaroslav. Technická správa. Interiéry SNG – Bratislava (zmena projektu).
Signed Nemec, Zvada, Krpala, dated February 1978, typewritten, 7 p. In:
Oddelenie správy budov SNG.
(09) THURZO, Igor. Budova Slovenskej národnej galérie a jej história.
Československý architekt, 24, 1978, vol. 7, pp. 4–5.
(10) VACULÍK, Karol. Nové priestory a expozície Slovenskej národnej galérie.
Výtvarný život, 22, vol. 7, pp. 12–19.
(11) [Kolektív autorov.] Záverečné technicko-ekonomické vyhodnotenie
dokončenej stavby "Rekonštrukcia a prístavba Slovenskej národnej galérie”.
Bratislava 1980, [THS, SNG, Stavoprojekt], 22 numbered pages and appendices.
(12) LIŠČÁK, Jozef. Areál Slovenskej národnej galérie v Bratislave (za Komisiu pre
kultúrne a školské stavby ÚV ZSA). Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 23,
1981, vol. 1–2, pp. 4–5.
(13) MRUŠKOVIČ, Štefan. [Areál Slovenskej národnej galérie v Bratislave]. Slovo
užívatel’a – i v mene návštevníkov. Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 23,
1981, vol. 1–2, pp. 5–9.
(14) DEDEČEK, Vladimír. [Areál Slovenskej národnej galérie v Bratislave]. Slovo
autora. Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 23, 1981, vol. 1–2, pp. 9–11.
(15) KUSÝ, Martin. Architektúra v službe človeka. Pravda, (?). In: Fond Vladimír
Dedeček, Zbierka architektúry, úžitkového umenia a dizajnu SNG.
(16) DEDEČEK, Vladimír. Východiská a činitele architektonickej tvorby troch
desat’ročí. Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 26, 1984, vol. 2, pp. 22–24.
32 BENCOVÁ, Jarmila. Múzeum ako časová a receptívna architektúra.
Projekt. Slovenská architektonická revue, 50, 2008, vol. 5, p. 29.
43

[1]
[2]

[3]
[1] Vladimír Dedeček, Southern/Danube wing of the Slovak National
Gallery (SNG) in Bratislava. Photography TASR/Štefan Petráš,
1977. Courtesy of the TASR/Štefan Petráš.
[2] Attributed to Franz Anton Hillebrandt /?/, Water Barracs,
1759–1763. Theresian military barracs (a casern) with demolished
southern/Danube wing before it was turned into the edifice
of the Slovak National Gallery. Photography unauthorized,
undated. Courtesy of Collection of Architecture, Applied Arts
and Design, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.
[3] The Danube river embankment with Water Barracs without
the front wing. Photography unauthorized, undated. Courtesy
of Fine Arts Archive, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.
44 | 45

[4]
[5]
[4–5] Vladimír Dedeček, Study for addition of southern/Danube wing, 1962. Plan and front view,
photography unauthorized, undated /1962?/. Courtesy of Collection of Architecture,
Applied Arts and Design, Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.
[6–8] Vladimír Dedeček, Study of SNG addition for the architects' association Zväz slovenských
architektov (1st alternative for site area, 2nd alternative for southern/Danube wing), 1963.
Watercolor on paper. Courtesy of Collection of Architecture, Applied Arts and Design,
Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.

[6]
[7]
[8]
46 | 47

[9]
[10]
[9–16] Vladimír Dedeček, Initial project of SNG addition (2nd alternative for site area,
3rd alternative for southern/Danube wing), 1967. Ozalid reproduction on paper,
Courtesy of Collection of Architecture, Applied Arts and Design,
the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.
[17] Vladimír Dedeček, Initial project of SNG, 1967. Model, white laminate and plexi-glass,
photography unauthorized, undated /1967?/, Courtesy of Fine Arts Archive,
the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.

[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
48 | 49

[18]
[19]
[18–23] Vladimír Dedeček, Comprehensive solution of SNG addition for project execution
(3rd alternative for site area, 4th alternative for southern/Danube wing – the “bridging”),
1969 (additions 1979). Ozalid reproduction on paper. Courtesy of Collection of Architecture,
Applied Arts and Design, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.
[24–25] Vladimír Dedeček, Project of SNG addition, undated /1969 or later/. Model, white laminate,
plexi-glass and other materials, photography unauthorized, undated. Courtesy of Collection
of Architecture, Applied Arts and Design, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.

[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
50 | 51

[26]
[27]
[26–29] Built edifices of the Slovak National Gallery Extension.
Photographs of the exterior and interior, unauthorized and undated
/Stavoprojekt and SNG, 1979–1980 and later/. Courtesy of Collection of Architecture,
Applied Arts and Design, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava.

[28]
[29]
52 | 53

03a.
TEXTUAL
INTERPRETATION
OF COMPOSITIONAL
AND CLUSTERING
ARRANGEMENTS marián zervan, monika mitášová

We resolved the exhibition spaces as variable halls, separated
by movable exhibit panels. Spatial variability and flexibility requirements
were of our spatial solution’s fundamental axiom... To this goal
we sacrificed many of the practicable architectural/artistic results
that a fixed exhibit space would allow, graded in expression...
Our solution’s content is based exclusively on how to display Slovakia’s
— vladimír dedeček
art, rather than displaying an architectural interior. 1
The cascaded shift of exhibition levels made it possible for each of them
— vladimír dedeček
to be lit by natural daylight. 2
An open amphitheatre, with an audiovisual block using film to promote
visual art, is part of the outdoor exhibition space. There are spaces
in various wings for libraries and reading rooms, academic research,
and individual departments such as those for graphic art and restoration
studios, a laboratory and a meeting hall with an audiovisual block at
— vladimír dedeček
the border between the exhibition and research/administrative spaces. 3
1 DEDEČEK, Vladimír. [Areál Slovenskej národnej galérie
v Bratislave]. Slovo autora. Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry,
23, 1981, vol. 1–2, pp. 10–11.
2 Ibidem, p. 10.
3 Ibidem, p. 11.
55

The Slovak National Gallery area site came into existence over
almost twenty years, from the early 1960s to the early 1980s, in
several stages. Project documentation has been preserved for
each stage / see …site’s genesis, analysis and reflection p. 15 /. This relatively
lengthy period of design and the subsequent staged realization
meant that the form of the designed work fundamentally
changed, and the architecture was never completed as a whole.
The staging also enabled Vladimír Dedeček to work into it aspects
of his earlier solutions (such as the urbanism of the checkerboard
raster and the natural lighting methods of Bratislava’s
Secondary economics school on Ulica Februárového vít’azstva),
and to ponder them in parallel with work on other projects (such
as Bratislava’s Comenius University Natural Science faculty in
Mlynská dolina, and Bratislava-Petržalka’s Multipurpose exhibition
facility). While the SNG was conceived as a renovation of
the Vodné kasárne (Water Barracks), which after 1948 were
already in the service of the new Slovak National Gallery, but
altogether entailed razing many buildings and building a series
of new ones. Working closely with then-director of the SNG
Karol Vaculík, Vladimír Dedeček came out against the concept
of reserving the Water Barracks as the domain of older art while
housing modern and contemporary art in another appropriate
location; instead he advocated combining these two forms in
a single area site, based around the same Water Barracks.
Thus the assignment was to become the linking of two
gallery types, not in one building but in a single area. This in turn
conditioned Dedeček’s conceptual working version 4 of architecture.
First of all, it pushed the period’s preconceptions on the
gallery to be rethought, so as not to be in a single mono-block
building or a pavilion arrangement of multiple buildings, but also
in the sense of interlinking the site’s interior and exterior spaces,
and putting into contact the SNG outdoor spaces with those
of the city. Interlinking urban planning and architectural aspects
had from the first been characteristic of Dedeček’s work and
became a constant in his thinking, but the SNG project boasts
even more striking and noteworthy layering and proliferation.
56

These tendencies conditioned both the selection from historically
established (anterior 5 ) urban planning and architectural
forms and the use of the clusters approach. The architect’s text
on the SNG site signals the interlinking of both optics – urban
planning and architectural – in part by frequently using the word
space, and with a special emphasis on differentiation of indoor
and outdoor spaces. On the other hand his thoughts on intentional
minimizing, or downplaying, in the architectural interior, in
favour of the space under the facing wing, imply that differentiating
processes were occurring not just between outdoor and
indoor spaces, but also between indoor space and the architectural
interior. Secondly, Dedeček implemented his conceptual
working version of architecture in that this interconnection
occurred in stages. Though even early variations clearly envisage
such staging, in practice the stages crystallized into a definitive
form gradually; they thus took on the changing ideas of the time
regarding both the SNG site and architectural thought itself. This
took place not just in the architect’s project, but also through
ongoing discussion and opinions by the architectural competition
commission’s members, including Dedeček’s teacher / see
…site’s genesis, analysis and reflection p. 18, 27 /. Thus the concept is not
just a monologue, but rather the SNG site area design was
exceptional for its dialogues and even “clusters of many voices”.
Vladimír Dedeček took three approaches to developing the
concept. The first was classical composition infected by creation
of clusters on various levels. This manifested itself chiefly
in the resolution of two types of alternatives, the first of which
4 There are four identifiable working versions of architecture
in Dedeček's architectural thinking: 1. conceptual (architecture
identifies with geometric thinking or the spirit of the age as formed
in space), 2. compositional (architecture is the arrangement
of volumes, spaces and typical figures based on the relation
between symmetry and asymmetry), 3. linguistic (architecture
comes into existence by putting syllables/cells into words/
sections, sentences/sectors etc), and 4. factor-based or factorial
(architecture comes into existence by taking into consideration
a variety of factors, from the natural to the socio-cultural).
5 EISENMAN, Peter. Diagram Diaries. London :
Thames and Hudson, 1999.
57

was that either to allow for or to ignore context. The historical
Water Barracks building was an impulse to allow for context, as
was Harminc’s Hotel Carlton Savoy, Fuchs’ Rosenthal rental
residence and even Belluš’ Hotel Devín. The lay public understood,
and still understands, Dedeček’s solution to be an example
of acontextualism. There is some validation of this opinion in
Dedeček’s text: “We did not speculate over the relationships
in composition or arrangement between the SNG buildings
and the buildings we proposed to demolish, for a range of
objective and subjective reasons”. Yet this sentence addresses
only some of the buildings, indeed those slated for razing;
it particularly concerns a defined portion of architectural context.
Even toward the buildings not meant to be knocked down,
Vladimír Dedeček never showed a desire to play up their external
similarity or historical morphology. To the contrary: he was
building, as became customary for him, his own internal context
for the whole site. All the alternatives in his design show that
the individual SNG buildings share the inclusion of a variety of
anterior architectural and urban design forms (for the gallery this
is the amphitheatre or odeum [a roofed amphitheatre], or the
stoa and agora or forum). The completed SNG buildings are for
example raised on pillars or terraced, or have walkways or continuous
balconies running around their perimeters. Contextually,
they share facing materials; and after all there is the shared
approach to design, such as shifting and terracing... / see …site’s
genesis, analysis and reflection p. 33–37 and Architectural interpretation, p. 24, 74–75 /.
The new formation of the site’s internal contextuality is significant
in realization where, for example, the Water Barracks’ rear
facades received a new facing in common with the entire site.
This clustering of historical and contemporary surfacing is literally
“acontextual-contextual”. Such generalization of common emblems
contemporary and historical, transformed into Dedeček’s
words, created (in contrast to the exterior similarities and preservation
of historical morphology) conditions for contextuality,
both on-site and outside the site, with the neighbouring buildings
both historical and modernistic. In this way, for instance,
58

the stoa, peristyle or portico motifs could become a contextual
nexus between the Water Barracks and the new SNG buildings,
like the internal courtyard motif linking the SNG site to almost all
the surrounding construction: not only did Harminc apply this to
the Carlton Savoy, but also Belluš to the Hotel Devín and Fuchs
to the Rosenthal residence. The Fuchs building connects to the
SNG via the site’s terraces, i.e. to what is now Paulínyho ulica,
and the morphology of the building is influenced by the sun’s
movement through the sky. In terms of terraces, the corner residential
building on Rázusovo nábrežie originally been slated for
razing has commonalities with the SNG site. In all alternatives
proposed for the site, the configuration of the horizontal prism
of the library and study area and the vertical SNG administrative
building was composed as an inversion of the vertical Hotel
Devín and its horizontal support facilities. Placing a raised plinth
in the Water Barracks courtyard, in fact, corresponds to the terrace
placed by Hotel Devín. Beyond this, all these forms of indoor
and outdoor architectural contextuality cooperate with the urbanist
contextuality that from its inception defined the site’s design.
The Water Barracks’ location and character offered as an
area solution the interconnection of four significant urban spaces:
to begin, two large town squares (Hviezdoslavovo, and what
is now called Námestie L’udovíta Štúra) and the Hotel Devín’s
foreground. These latter, in the first alternatives, were to be access
points to the SNG as well as the riverfront; this latter was
in the period’s urban planning conceptions seen as “... the showpiece
of the city... with a very social function” / for more see …site’s
genesis, analysis and reflection p. 19 /. This could be the basis for the SNG
site area’s checkerboard raster, at the core of which is the Water
Barracks courtyard with arcaded portico connected to the riverfront.
Other fields in this checkerboard were occupied by the
amphitheatre, separated from Riečna ulica by a wall of hollow
concrete forms and interstitial space with pillars under the library;
and by the entry space by the administrative building and parking
area, on which was meant to be a garage with outdoor terrace
sculpture gallery / see …site’s genesis, analysis and reflection p. 16 /.
59

The administrative building’s terraces descend to Námestie
L’udovíta Štúra, as the outdoor gallery descends the opposite
way toward the new space to be created by razing the residential
buildings on Riečna ulica and Lodná ulica. Indeed, even
the facing wing, i.e. the “bridging” in an unbuilt alternative,
descended past the Hotel Devín corner through a cascading
contemporary art gallery and into the same space. When the
alternative including the outdoor gallery was not realized,
Dedeček punctuated the administrative building’s walkable
roof with a high gable, its window openings running just as
the outdoor gallery’s terraces and the cascading arrangement
of the contemporary art gallery were to descend. Among other
things, this alluded to the newly opened checkerboard field
that was both inside and above the site. This interconnection,
or to be more precise transfusion, of the city’s public spaces
with the gallery’s half-public outdoor gallery spaces, became an
urban planning contextual prerequisite for any other possible
architectural contextualities. It is literally the clustering of public
and semi-public outdoor squares on which the SNG site grew.
Another circle of alternatives brought in by Dedeček’s
compositional working version of architecture had to do with
deciding between a figurative representational or a nonfigurative
abstract building or area. At first glance, this is
a national gallery for the state and the nation with no obvious
reference to extra-architectural meanings – unless we
are tempted to consider the raised bridging and opening of
the view of the Water Barracks as a move towards representing
19 th century historicism, which is even now a sore point
in our national consciousness, and if we see the preferred
red/white colouring as identification with pan-Slavism; and
if we choose not to understand the layering of gallery floor
volumes, such as one might find in log cabins, as evocative of
folk architecture in Slovakia. The SNG area site employs no
permanent art decoration in a figurative function, as is the case
with Dedeček’s Supreme Court. This is understandable, as the
project intended the gallery to show temporary and changing
60

visual art in its outdoor spaces. The artworks so installed were
part of the gallery’s collections, and became an integral sign
of the gallery site’s architecture/urbanism. The bridging itself
is sometimes seen as a sculptural form, though the form came
about through the aforementioned architectural processes and
not as a sculpture. This kind of architecture reference to other
artworks, and vice-versa, can also be explained as a specific
form of extra- architectural representation.
As a counterbalance to this type of representation, a tendency
to abstraction was employed. The whole site’s architectural
forms fashion, through geometric surfaces and volumes,
abstract rasters, which in turn become frames for the
outdoor galleries and exhibits. The grids become facades in
places; in some these are large coloured surfaces that together
with the stone foundation call to mind historical architecture
(like the Water Barracks rear facade); elsewhere the proliferation
of them – as on the administrative building’s east facade –
recedes to an ambivalent play of blind red and white windows,
brise-soleil and glassless attic windows, as on the administrative
building’s west facade. Added to this dichotomy between
extra-architectural representation and abstraction, there is striking
representation within architecture dominating the site, systematizing
basic meanings in architecture: it is indeed possible
to grasp the entire site as a cluster of ancient Greek agora
analogies. Some of these are surrounded by vaulted arcade of
the Water Barracks corridors, or the pillared arcade that opens
from the hollow concrete blocks wall and mass of the library
pavilion, alluding to ancient Greek stoas. The latter are further
evoked in the heights of the continuous library balconies or administration
building walkways. The agoras are partly filled by
platforms or terraced amphitheatres, and artworks. The amphitheatre
is a dominating figure, bringing together the whole area
in dynamic balance. It fulfills two related functions: presentation
and education/communication. It can be either an interior cinema
or an exterior lecture room/odeum. The cascaded exhibition
space’s bridging levels are themselves an amphitheatre.
61

Indeed the amphitheatre clusters even within itself; examples
of this include the lecture hall odeum cluster with the outdoor
amphitheatre terrace above it, and clustering with other
established, anterior forms of the context. A characteristic
example is the facing, “bridging” SNG wing. The project’s initial
alternatives brought together the forms of bridge and house,
and later alternatives added the odeum. Three parallel exhibition
levels, divided by moving panels, function as a multiplied stoa.
This cluster of architectural meanings undoubtedly contributed
to the conception of the extraordinary construction/spatial
cluster of the bridging. Yet this came about from more than just
an anterior architectural forms cluster, motivated by a balancing
of architectural and urban planning aims.
The form that the concept’s next developmental phase took
is one of the central issues in Dedeček’s architectural thinking,
expressed in the polarity of mono-block/pavilion. This issue
subsumes another way that the architect links architecture
and urban planning. The SNG site was intended chiefly as an
exhibition area, and a basic need of the renovation and addition
was to increase exhibition areas. However, in discussion with
the SNG director, Vladimír Dedeček grasped the institution as
purposed for communications and research as well as exhibition.
Such a program was best suited for a pavilion arrangement.
In this sense the SNG area can be read as an effort at
interlinking contemporary pavilion buildings and the historical
form of a three-wing arrangement, with the wings – in contrast
to an enclosed four-wing form – anticipating the outcome of
separate pavilions. Pavilions can be relatively independent
monofunction units, of unrelated volumes and spaces, or differentiated
by storey as in the three-tract administration building,
which was originally designed as a mono-block. The architect’s
text implies that the monofunction administrative storeys were
hybridized to include exhibition spaces in various form. It might
be the form of “art cabinet” (study room), as was the case with
the graphics study room; or clustering a lecture and projection
hall under an outdoor terrace and a walkway hub, connecting
62

administration corridors with the Water Barracks problematicizing
three-tract arrangement.
The proliferation of pedestals in the administrative building’s
main stairway has an equally hybridizing effect, though functionally
this serves to differentiate the vertical passage and the
horizontal connection to hygiene facilities. The dominating pavilion
arrangement refers to the architect’s linguistic syntagmatic
working version of architecture; the rules of this were differentiated
both in program and especially in composition, with clustering
intending linking of of contextuality and meanings within
architecture. This “salami method” 6 in distributing programs in
sections led to a “domino” game of playing with them. The shifting
of pavilion storeys in the administrative building, or raising
and shifting them in the bridging, were leading to two goals: to
create clusters of galleries and terraces, and to make the courtyard
accessible; Dedeček’s agora-based urban planning for the
SNG site confirms this.
Ultimately, the third version of the elaborated concept became
the architect’s “factor-based” (factorial) working version.
The decisive factor in the formation became light in its various
forms: from direct and diffuse natural lighting to artificial varieties.
Vladimír Dedeček has on various occasions explicitly affirmed
this / see Textual interpretation, p. 55 and Architectural interpretation, p. 78 /.
Thus bringing in light was to be the regulator behind shifting
the exhibition halls of the bridging into a cluster of a hall space
and spatial levels, as proved by figurative architectural clustering
and selection of the bridge’s roofing materials. Dedeček let
the light into the SNG site differentially (the natural light in the
bridging versus the Water Barracks artificial lighting), but also
6 The first step was to order all the sections and sectors
in a continual syntagmatic sequence that is potentially open,
both in length and in height. The program of the building was
decisive in determining the sequence's closure. Here, two basic
rules run the show: typological/functional, and constructive.
Dedeček metaphorically referred to this first step as a so-called
salami method. The second step consisted of cutting this section/
sector continuum into compositional units (storeys, pavilion
wings...). Dedeček usually called this second step domino.
63

locked it in places (the Water Barracks’ rear facade); i.e. he
both introduced light and muted it, or blocked its sharper variations
(the administrative building’s west facade). This contradictory
playing with light was unquestionably meant to facilitate
reading of meanings within architecture.
But what do these three ways of developing the SNG site
concept in a single, contradictory unity, and what role in this
does clustering play? We presume the clustering mediates
a basic theme within architecture, that theme being the exhibiting
of art in diverse forms, expressed through clusters
of agoras, stoas and amphitheatres, or odea and pavilions.
In his text, Dedeček wrote that his solution’s content was
not meant to exhibit an architectural interior, but exclusively
to exhibit Slovakia’s art, though he certainly had in mind international
art as well. In this he gave voice to the unstated
dogma that echoes in the minds of artists and art historians
still: the architecture should be a neutral frame for visual art.
Furthermore, while Vladimír Dedeček was interested in architectural
asceticism, he decidedly was not limiting exhibiting to
the classic fine/visual arts. The bridging is a cluster fulfilling
the function of a “raised curtain”, making possible the exposition
of art on an outdoor stage and simultaneously in a historical
architecture; it also links the gallery’s exhibit spaces
with the “most exhibited” part of the city of which the SNG
was becoming part: the Danube riverfront. The amphitheatres
(with cinema) and the individual stoas are also exhibit spaces.
In some of his renderings, Dedeček himself drew sculptures
in the stoa space opening onto Riečna ulica and toward the
Hotel Devín. The theme of exhibiting, exposition and installation
thus penetrated the whole area’s outdoor and indoor
spaces, even those not primarily intended for exhibition. This
theme is likewise a test of the diversity of architectural forms
to exhibit art and architecture. In Dedeček’s words, flexibility
and variability were to be the fundamental axiom of the SNG
site’s spatial solution. Therefore, indisputably this was not
a question of mere halls and moving panels, but of the variable
64

and flexible interconnection of architectural and urban forms
and their figurative meanings within architecture; of clustered
established, anterior forms that would invite a variety of views
and diverse forms of exposition. The expression of this flexibility
a variability is clustering.
65

03b.
ARCHITECTURAL
INTERPRETATION
OF COMPOSITIONAL
AND CLUSTERING
ARRANGEMENTS
benjamín brádňanský, vít halada
Co-authors : monika mitášová, marián zervan
In collaboration with : andrej strieženec, mária novotná,
anna cséfalvay, danica pišteková

[d—01]
SNG edifice {red} in larger-scale and smaller-scale
urban contexts with surrounding cultural buildings marked
in light red, aerial view.
67

[d—02] Built SNG edifices {red} in their relation
to both the site and the historical Water Barracks,
axonometric view.

[d—03]
Unbuilt SNG edifices {red} related
to the site, built edifices and historic Water Barracks,
axonometric view.
68 | 69

[d—04] Paths of movement {red lines} in both built and unbuilt SNG edifices,
axonometric views. Interior { gallery } squares and “agoras” related
to exterior { city } “agoras” and Danube River bank, aerial view
/ see Textual interpretation, p. 59 /.

[d—05]
Clustering of routes {red lines} interconnecting SNG edifices
with interior { gallery } squares, axonometric view.
70 | 71

[d—06] Clusters of SNG “agoras” and “amphitheatres” {light red}
and clusters of SNG “odea” and pavilions {gray}
/ see Textual interpretation, p. 64 /, axonometric view.

[d—07]
Research and administrative building wing {light red} with “streets in the air”:
exterior galleries and walkable roofs {red diagonal hatching}, axonometric view.
Exhibition wing: “bridging” {light red plane} with interior exhibition galleries
{red diagonal hatching}, axonometric view.
72 | 73

[d—08] SNG interior “amphitheatres”/“odea”: cinema {darker red plane}
in administrative wing, axonometric view and 3-storey exhibition space
in bridging wing {red plane} – expanded section of the 3 layers
of amphitheatre gallery space in bridging wing
/ see Textual interpretation, p. 59, 60–61 /.

[d—09] SNG interior “amphitheatres”/“odea” { urban interior }:
Water Barracks courtyard, cinema amphiteatre, and exhibition plane
under administrative wing {red plane} related to unbuilt
exterior terrace roof-gallery situated on walkable roof of garage wing
{red diagonal hatching}, axonometric view.
74 | 75

C
A
B
[d—10] Two introductory proposals for SNG front wing {the Danube river wing}:
A − hypothetic reconstruction of 1 st proposal designed in 1962
{according to Dedecek’s drawing of front elevation},
B − 2 nd proposal designed in 1963, and
C − diagram of shifted floors with top lighting and subterranean telescopic
perforated wall under bridging, axonometric views
/ see Textual interpretation, p. 63–64 /

E
D
[d—11] Next phase of front wing design: 3 rd proposal designed in 1967:
D − creation of a view into courtyard by removing pilotis and first floor,
E − opening and interconnection of 3 floors into one
“amphitheatre”/“odeum” in bridging wing.
Clustering of amphitheatre, interior corridors/“streets”
and exhibition space, sections and sectional axonometric view
/ see Textual interpretation, p. 63 /.
76 | 77

[d—12] Superimposition of 1 st and 2 nd proposals of front wing:
variance. Diagram of riverbank view into courtyard with diagram of natural
gallery wing lighting {red}, sections. Two bridging wing sections:
relationship of functions, structure and form: shift of interior gallery
by half of the module { ½ A }.

[d—13]
Structure of bridging wing: cluster of load-bearing and supported,
suspended and consoled structures, axonometric view.
78 | 79

[d—14] Relationships of module field { M = 7.2 m × 7.2 m } to structure and form.
Perpendicular, longitudinal and vertical shift of floors: variances
in floor latitude and shifted floors. Shifted consoled floor structures
by 1/6 of module, axonometric view of administrative building.

[d—15]
Shifts in column structure: cluster of column frame
and diagonal supporting elements. Consoled floors,
axonometric view of administrative building.
80 | 81

[d—16] 1 st subterranean level with paths of movement marked { red },
axonometric view.

[d—17]
Entrance {1 st level } of administrative building with paths of movement marked,
axonometric view.
82 | 83

[d—18] 2 nd level of administrative building with paths of movement marked,
axonometric view.

[d—19]
3 rd level with paths of movement marked,
axonometric view.
84 | 85

[d—20] 4 th level with paths of movement marked,
axonometric view.

[d—21]
5 th level with paths of movement marked,
axonometric view.
86 | 87

[d—22] 6 th level with paths of movement marked,
axonometric view.

[d—23]
7 th level with paths of movement marked,
axonometric view.
88 | 89

[d—24] Facade rasters {according to elevations provided
for SNG reconstruction competition}, elevations.

[d—25]
Perpendicular and longitudinal sections.
90 | 91

[d—26] Built edifices of SNG area, axonometric view
/ see Textual interpretation, p. 55 /.

92 | 93

04.
CHRONOLOGY monika mitášová, marián zervan

1952
Vladimír Dedeček designed the freestanding Exhibition
Pavilion of the Slovak National Gallery for the present-day
Kamenné square (formerly Steinplatz, Kyjevské square)
in Bratislava, as his thesis project under Professor Emil
Belluš. At that time Professor Belluš also approved the area
of the former park for the extension of the SNG where the
Prior Shopping Mall 1 (Tesco since 1989) and Kyjev Hotel 2
by Ivan Matušík, a younger graduate of Belluš’s, are still
standing today.
In his thesis Dedeček designed a gallery pavilion in
the city park as a two-floor hall space (a gallery for sculpture
on the first floor and one for paintings on the second floor).
The project has not been preserved but according to the
author it featured a functionalist plan, variable exhibition spaces
and a classical column portico along the pavilion’s perimeter
designed in the spirit of the first, Stalinist phase of the Socialist
Realism, that was the centre of attention for Professor Belluš
and his students on the Faculty of Architecture, Slovak
University of Technology (SUT) in Bratislava which had been
undergoing political purges in the 1950s. 3
1957
Professor Emil Belluš published an article on the
problems with the extension of the Slovak National Gallery
in the magazine Výtvarný život. 4
1 Dating: Competition project for Kamenné square, 1960. The
Shopping mall Prior project in Bratislava 1961–1963, construction:
1964–1968. In: ZERVAN, Marián. Ivan Matušík. Architektonické dielo
(exhibition catalogue). Bratislava: SAS, 1995, pp. 14, 32.
2 Dating: The Kyjev Hotel project in Bratislava: 1960–1968,
construction: 1968–1973. In: Ibidem, pp. 15, 32.
3 BELLUŠ, Emil. Teória architektonickej tvorby II. Stavby sociálne,
kultúrne, zdravotnícke, telovýchovné a športové (text book).
Bratislava: Štátne nakladatel’stvo v Bratislave, 1951.
4 BELLUŠ, Emil. Dobudovat’ Slovenskú národnú galériu. Výtvarný
život, 2, 1957, No. 3, pp. 91–94.
95

1961
the director of the SNG Dr. Karol Vaculík consulted
with the architect Štefan Svetko over the urban planning point
of view on the construction extension of the demolished
south wing of the historical Water Barracks (1759–1763)
and, following his recommendations, he also consulted with
Vladimír Dedeček on the architectural aspects. 5
1962
after discussions with the director of the SNG Dr. Vaculík,
Vladimír Dedeček designed the initial study for the construction
of the southern extension of Water Barracks, the Danube wing.
1963
the Slovak Architects Society announced the assignment
of a study of the urban planning/architectural project for
the completion of construction of the Slovak National Gallery
in Bratislava. The task to complete the gallery was extended
to complete the whole corner block. Four authors, or rather
co-authors, submitted their designs: Martin Beňuška and
Štefánia Rosincová; Vladimír Dedeček; Jaroslav Fragner with
his team and Eugen Kramár with Ján Šprlák. According to
assessment records, the jury which consisted of Alojz Dařiček,
Ján Steller, L’ubomír Titl, Milan Škorupa and Karol Vaculík
evaluated the studies in the following order: 1. Dedeček,
2. Kramár and Šprlák, 3. Fragner with his team, 4. Beňuška
and Rosincová.
1964
on 6th January the expert committee of the Slovak
Architects Society evaluated Dedeček’s design of the
new SNG building as the winning project: “The evaluation
committee, taking into account the overall assessment
of the individual solutions’ architectural and social benefits,
have put the design of Ing. Arch. Vladimír Dedeček in
first place on account of the overall urban planning and
96

architectural solution as well as the operational solution for the
difficult situation around the SNG and the significant adjacent
areas where the author managed to provide a solution at
a high architectural level.” 6 Work began on the initial project.
Dr. Karol Vaculík dealt with the perspective of the extension
of the SNG in the magazine Kultúrny život. 7
1967
Vladimír Dedeček finished the initial project for
the Construction Completion and Extension of the SNG
premises. The project was submitted to the expert committee 8
of the Ministry of Education and Culture. 9 Under the direction
of Professor Belluš the committee drew up their opinion with
objections. According to later comments from the architect,
the committee described the project as “... conservative –
there is seemingly no point in adapting the scale and shape
of the extension to the surrounding and architecturally
unimportant buildings”. 10
5 Monika Mitášová’s unpublished interview with Vladimír Dedeček
in Bratislava, summer 2014 – summer 2015.
6 [Collective of authors.] Záverečné technicko-ekonomické
vyhodnotenie stavby Rekonštrukcia a prístavba SNG,
Bratislava 1979, p. 3.
7 VACULÍK, Karol. Už by mala byt’ (O perspektívach prístavby
Slovenskej národnej galérie). Kultúrny život, 19, 1964, No. 19, p. 10.
8 The expert opinions were written by prof. Dr. Ing. Jozef Harvančík,
Ing. arch. Marián Marcinka and one opinion had illegible signatures
with no names. Within the expert committee, the design was
commented by prof. Ing. arch. Emil Belluš, prof. Dr. Ing. Jozef
Harvančík, Ing. arch. Štefan Svetko for the Bratislava Chief City
Architect Office, prof. Ing. arch. Vladimír Karfík, Ing. arch. Anton
Zimmermann [Cimmermann]. Ing. arch. Jozef Lacko apologized.
See attachment to Dr. Karol Vaculík’s letter to arch. Vladimír
Dedeček from 4 September 1967. Typewritten copy, p. 19.
In: Fond Karol Vaculík, Visual Arts Archive of SNG.
9 Direction of SNC Committee for Education and Culture from 28
December 1962. The implementer was the Minister of Education
and Culture RSDr. Vasil Bil’ak. See [Collective of authors.]
Záverečné technicko-ekonomické vyhodnotenie dokončenej stavby,
Rekonštrukcia a prístavba SNG. Bratislava 1979, p. 3.
10 / see p. 99 /
97

1969
a new initial project for the gallery extension with bridging
to the historical Water Barracks building on the Danube
waterfront was approved. Architect Dedeček worked on the
summary of the project solution and implementation project
for the premises of the SNG in Bratislava (construction was
to take place until the end of the 1970s). The responsible
project architects were Peter Mazanec, Mária Oravcová and
Ján Piekert. The interior architect was Jaroslav Nemec.
1975
Vladimír Dedeček published the article: “Nová tvár
Slovenskej národnej galérie” (The New Face of the Slovak
National Gallery). 11
1977
Dr. Martin Kusý and Genovéva Grácová wrote about the
SNG extension 12 in the magazine Slovensko on the occasion
of the completion of some parts of the building. The new
director of the SNG Štefan Mruškovič commented on the
extension 13 in the magazines Výtvarný život and Vlastivedný
časopis. Another issue of Výtvarný život contained
contributions from the dismissed director, art historian
Karol Vaculík 14 and art historian L’udmila Peterajová. 15
1978
Igor Thurzo reviewed the SNG extension for
the Československý Architekt magazine. 16
Professor Ladislav Beisetzer wrote about the extension
to the Slovak National Gallery in his article subtitled “Dielo
a verejnost’” (Work and the Public) in the magazine Projekt:
“On the extension of the Slovak National Gallery; in brief
we could say it expresses the current level of the metal
industry. We rather expected the author's intent to express
and demonstrate the craftsmanship of a nation that has been
98

dealing artistically with materials since time immemorial.
The strength of this composition is the activation of the
view of the old building’s arches towards the waterfront
promenade. (...) The author’s architectural intent may be
accepted, accepted with objections or not accepted by the
recipient. (...) We must count on the fact that there are works
of architectural creation too, the same as in art that as such,
lead to new invasions. The public accepts these with difficulty
at the time when they are produced, or even criticize them.
As long as such work is based on the elaborated theory
of architecture and it conforms to it and stays programmecompliant,
it follows the development trends and becomes
style-constitutional; it is beneficial for art because it stimulates
the further deepening of innovation. (...) Thus, the awareness
that art cannot be imposed on people; that art can be
accepted or not accepted by the public at its level, is yet more
10 Vladimír Dedeček. Areál Slovenskej národnej galérie v Bratislave.
Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 23, 1981, No. 1–2, p. 9.
“Ing. Marcinka objected against the dominant solution of the
administrative building that is inconsistent with the exhibition
premises’ main function and its architectural form.” In: DEDEČEK,
Vladimír. Technická správa k alternatívnemu riešeniu ÚP SNG,
typewritten copy. Bratislava 11 June 1967, p. 1. Fond Vladimír
Dedeček, Zbierka architektúry, dizajnu a úžitkového umenia SNG.
11 DEDEČEK, Vladimír. Nová tvár Slovenskej národnej galérie.
Technické noviny, 8 April 1975, No. 14, p. 5.
12 KUSÝ, Martin – GRÁCOVÁ, Genovéva. Slovenská národná galéria.
Slovensko, 1, 1977, No. 3, p. 4–5.
13 See MRUŠKOVIČ, Štefan. Expozície Slovenskej národnej galérie
v Bratislave znovuotvorené. Vlastivedný časopis, 26, 1977, No. 3,
pp. 97–101 and idem. Pred novou etapou Slovenskej národnej
galérie. Výtvarný život, 22, 1977, No. 7, pp. 11–12. Two years later
he also published the anniversary text: MRUŠKOVIČ, Štefan.
Slovenská národná galéria tridsat’ročná. Vlastivedný časopis, 28,
1979, No. 2, pp. 74–76.
14 VACULÍK, Karol. Nové priestory a expozície Slovenskej národnej
galérie. Výtvarný život, 22, 1977, No. 7, pp. 12–19.
15 PETERAJOVÁ, L’udmila. Slovenská národná galéria po dvadsiatich
rokoch. Výtvarný život, 22, 1977, No. 7, pp. 20–23.
16 THURZO, Igor. Budova Slovenskej národnej galérie a jej história.
Československý architekt, 24, 1978, No. 7, pp. 4–5.
A piece of information on SNG was also published one year later:
ČAPKA, B.[?] Slovenská národní galérie v Bratislavě.
Československý architekt, 25, 1979, No. 7, p. 8.
99

pressing. The architectural works that have not been accepted
are in a worse position because they are tolerated and yet
fixed in their concrete foundations for decades.” 17
1979
part of the Slovak National Gallery building
in Bratislava was completed and a final inspection made.
The whole premises have never been completed.
in his book Československá architektura 1945–1977
(Czechoslovak Architecture 1945–1977 ), the architect
and historian Josef Pechar compared the SNG extension
to Czech architect Prager’s work, this time to the building
of the Federal Assembly of the Czechoslovak Federal
Republic in Prague (together with Kadeřábek and Albrecht,
the construction took place between 1966–1973, the
headquarters of Slobodná Európa Radio since 1995, currently
one of the buildings of the National Museum in Prague).
The four wings of the Federal Assembly are structurally
designed as bridge beams on end supports, similar to the
front wing of the SNG. “In many cases today we see ways
in which architecture copes with the large dimensions of
steel structures and industrial design which has an ingenious
impact on the outer architectural form as well as the
interior.” 18 In this text, Pechar regards Prager’s and Dedeček’s
buildings as innovations in construction and material
on one side and as new sources of the current architectural
form on the other.
1980
the photography publication Soudobá architektura
ČSSR 19 (Current Architecture of the CSSR ) by Jaroslav
Veber also featured the extension of the SNG in Bratislava.
Czech architectural historian Radomíra Sedláková described
it in the book as a layer arrangement of the robust bridging
volumes that give a new scale to the whole surrounding
100

area. 20 The monumentality of the bridging was, in her opinion,
in contrast to the more delicate structure of the arcade
courtyard of the historical Water Barracks building. The
bridging is: “an object that is structurally courageous but
architecturally somewhat contradictory.” 21 In other words: the
greater is the contrast in scale, the greater is the architectural
“contradiction”. While modernists understood monumentality as
an expression of spiritual and cultural needs (in their view it was
only possible at a time when an unifying knowledge and culture
existed, representing the new spirit and collective feeling of the
modern post-war times in cooperation with all artists 22 ), this
modern view of monumentality – i.e. an innovative synthesis
of old layers with new ones – was not considered to be the
result of the social consensus at the beginning of the 1980s.
What came to the fore in the historical centres of European
cities was the maintenance of the layers and scales of historical
architecture and the various forms of transfer between historical
and current architecture in the post-modern way of thinking and
urban planning and architectural design.
1981
a set of articles on the SNG building was published
in Slovak architectural magazine Projekt. It contained a text
by Jozef Liščák (for the Slovak Architects Society Committee
17 BEISTZER, Ladislav. Väzby architektúry. Dielo a verejnost’. Projekt.
Revue slovenskej architektúry, 20, 1978, No. 9–19, pp. 67–68.
18 PECHAR, Josef. Československá architektura 1945–1977.
Praha: Odeon, 1979, p. 38.
19 VEBR, Jaroslav – NOVÝ, Otakar – VALTEROVÁ, Radomíra. Soudobá
architektura ČSSR. Praha: Panorama, 1980, p. 129 [Parallel
introductory text of the chapter signed: rav. (Radomíra Valterová)].
20 Ibidem, pict. No.112, p. 137..
21 Ibidem.
22 SERT, José Luis – LÉGER, Fernand – GIEDION, Siegfried.
Neun Punkte über Monumentalität – Ein menschliches Bedürfnis
[1943]. In: GIEDION, Siegfried. Architektur und Gemeinschaft:
Tagebuch einer Entwicklung. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1956, pp. 40–42.
Quotation according to: SERT, José Luis – LÉGER, Fernand –
GIEDION, Siegfried. Nine Points of Monumentality. In: OCKMAN,
Joan: Architecture Culture 1943–1968. A Documentary Anthology.
New York: Rizzoli 1993, pp. 29–30.
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for Cultural and Educational Buildings) together with a text
by the author of SNG (Author's comments). The new director
of the SNG Štefan Mruškovič 23 also gave his critical view
as the user.
1982
historians Tibor Zalčík and Matúš Dulla mentioned several
of Dedeček's buildings in their book Slovenská architektúra
1976–1980 (Slovak Architecture 1976–1980 ). They put the
Slovak National Gallery building together with works such as
the Community Centre in Dunajská Streda by Jozef Slíž, Eva
Grébertová and Alexander Braxatoris and the House of Arts in
Piešt’any by Ferdinand Milučký in the chapter “Mohutnost’ formy
a tvaru” (The massiveness of form and shape) compiled as the
Slovak analogy or parallel of the international movement of new
brutalism in Great Britain. “This visual-art expression, however,
has not reached the extreme brutal forms in our country and
it has always been softened, mainly by the introduction of the
classic harmonic principles of human-scale composition.” 24
The authors of the book – in line with the magazine
articles of architect and historian Dr. Martin Kusý – stated that
the strong point of the gallery extension was the generosity
and the extent of the intention 25 to construct the first gallery
building ever to exhibit modern art in Slovakia (generosity
seems here to represent another, more acceptable side
of the coin of the criticized hugeness, massiveness replacing
the more complex concept of monumentality). They also
saw the visual effect of the contrast between the horizontal
lines of the new wing and the arcade arches of the historical
building as a strong point of the SNG bridging.
The “colossal scale” of the SNG front façade and its
“insensitive connection to neighbouring buildings” was
considered less convincing. 26 Zalčík and Dulla also criticized
the symmetrical composition relationships between the
historical building and the new front wing (bridging) with
the asymmetrical operation (entrance to the building in the right
102

front “corner” of the courtyard). In fact they described the
whole courtyard and the area under the front Danube wing,
i.e. the bridging, as non-functional. “The solution of the back
wing together with its material and colour finish is also
contradictory from the composition point of view.” 27 At the
same time they admitted that these contradictions are also
derived from the incomplete and unfinished implementation
of Dedeček's design and observed that if the building had
been finished in its entirety according to Dedeček’s project,
the contradiction would have been “partially moderated”. 28
23 See DEDEČEK, Vladimír. [Areál Slovenskej národnej galérie
v Bratislave]. Slovo autora. Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry,
23, 1981, No. 1-2, pp. 9–11; LIŠČÁK, Jozef. Areál Slovenskej
národnej galérie v Bratislave (za Komisiu pre kultúrne a školské
stavby ÚV ZSA). Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 23, 1981,
No. 1-2, pp. 4–5; MRUŠKOVIČ, Štefan. 1981. [Areál Slovenskej
národnej galérie v Bratislave]. Slovo užívatel’a – i v mene
návštevníkov. Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 23, 1981,
No. 1-2, pp. 5–9. See also OHRABLO, František – ČERNÍK, Peter.
Zasklená strecha nad výstavným objektom SNG. Projekt. Revue
slovenskej architektúry, 23, 1981, No. 1-2, p. 15.
24 ZALČÍK, Tibor – DULLA, Matúš. Slovenská architektúra 1976–1980.
Bratislava: Veda, 1982, p. 63.
25 Ibidem, p. 72.
26 “The massive steel construction bridges a 54,5 m span, enabling
visual interconnection and views from the waterfront to the glassed
arcades of the courtyard. This interconnection and contrast
of horizontal lines of the new wing with the arcade arches represent
the strong points of the visual-art effect of the gallery's architecture.
The colossal scale of the front façade as well as its insensitive
connection to neighbouring buildings are less convincing.
The author himself admitted that evaluators' wishes had forced
him to a jump in which he felt the scale and framework of the
environment as well as the material and technical possibilities
had been exceeded.” In: ibidem, p. 65.
27 Ibidem.
28 “It needs to be observed that the building has not been finished
in the range envisaged by the original project. The completion
of the whole unit would have partially moderated the contrast with
the surrounding housing. The overall contrast and the dimensional
pathos that make primary impression and that are, together with
elementary geometric forms used, also characteristic for other
author’s works, could be considered positive if they were not
accompanied by some disturbing moments that we have briefly
pointed out.” In: ibidem, pp. 65–66.
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1987
journal Výtvarný život published an article by L’ubomír
Podušel called Slovenská národná galéria o budúcnosti
(The Slovak National Gallery about the future) 29 .
1988
the former director of the SNG Dr. Karol Vaculík published
a catalogue/publication 30 dedicated to the history of the
gallery on its 40th anniversary. An article on the construction
of this institution was also published by an actual director
Dr. Mruškovič in Výtvarný život 31 .
1990
in his article “Hriechy architektúry” (The Sins of
Architecture), Professor Štefan Šlachta, architect, historian,
(after 1989) post-revolution Dean of The Academy of Fine
Arts and Design in Bratislava and politician, commented
on Dedeček’s Archive and the Supreme Court buildings in
Bratislava as well as on the question of context or lack of
context of Dedeček's extension of the SNG: “One of the
dominant architectural sins is the Slovak National Gallery –
more precisely the extended part of the old Water Barracks.
(...) The aggressiveness of the mass of the gallery towards the
neighbouring objects is the first characteristic mistake of the
author's concept. (...) The misunderstanding of the “genius
loci” is most distinctively documented by the solution of the
gallery courtyard. More precisely the former courtyard that
used to be here but ‘left’ with the new solution. (...) Although
the filled and elevated area of the court has created space
to exhibit sculptures, it has destroyed the possibility of their
cultural perception and feeling.” 32
1991
Slovak magazine Projekt published a review of mentioned
Dedeček’s building of the Supreme court of Slovak Socialist
Republic in Bratislava. The authors of the review, architects
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Bohuslav Kraus and Ján Kodoň, also assessed this building
in the context of the gallery extension: “the construction [of the
court], a huge toothy colossus, has immediately controlled the
whole space and has imposed its characteristic image upon it,
which has been well known since the time of the construction
of the Slovak National Gallery on the Danube waterfront”. 33
1999
an article by L’ubomír Podušel was published on
the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment
of the SNG 34 .
2000
in the book Dejiny Slovenského výtvarného umenia.
20. storočie (History of Slovak Fine Arts in the 20 th Century),
edited by Zora Rusinová historian Matúš Dulla dedicated one
sentence to Dedeček's SNG extension and in fact to all of his
works: “The courageous shaping (although with a number of
constructional imperfections) of the extension of the SNG
in Bratislava by Vladimír Dedeček (1969–1979) has caught
contradictory notice”. 35
2001
a public panel discussion was held on 21 st March in
the closed bridging – the exhibition space of the SNG
29 PODUŠEL, L’ubomír. Slovenská národná galéria o budúcnosti.
Výtvarný život, 32, 1987, No. 3, pp. 23–24.
30 VACULÍK, Karol: Slovenská národná galéria v slovenskej kultúre.
Bratislava: SNG, Tatran, 1988, p. 70.
31 MRUŠKOVIČ, Štefan. Štyridsat’ rokov Slovenskej národnej galérie.
Výtvarný život, 33, 1988, No. 6, pp. 1–2.
32 ŠLACHTA, Štefan. Hriechy architektúry. Príroda a spoločnost’,
39, 1990, No. 20, p. 18.
33 KRAUS, Bohuslav – KODOŇ, Ján. Budova Najvyššieho súdu
Slovenskej republiky v Bratislave. Projekt. Revue slovenskej
architektúry, 33, 1991, No. 7–8, pp. 47–49, p. 47.
34 PODUŠEL, L’ubomír. Slovenská národná galéria pät’desiatročná.
Pamiatky a múzeá, 48, 1999, No. 1, pp. 28–32.
35 DULLA, Matúš. Architektúra od moderny k sorele a spät’ 1950–
1970. In: RUSINOVÁ, Zora (ed.). Dejiny slovenského výtvarného
umenia. 20. storočie. Bratislava: SNG, 2000, p. 227.
105

south Danube wing (closed due to it’s state of serious
disrepair), dedicated to the possibility of the demolition,
repair, reconstruction and modernisation of the SNG
building. The discussion 36 was accompanied by an exhibition
of documents regarding the historical Water Barracks
building and the design documentation of the SNG premises
by Vladimír Dedeček. Curator Alexandra Kusá.
There were several calls for the construction of a new
gallery building; the only difference in them was their
aim to repair, reconstruct or demolish the SNG bridging.
The “... possibility of removing the construction” was openly
presented only by Professor Štefan Šlachta: “Personally,
I would prefer to look for a way of having a new gallery,
to seek a new solution, because this reconstruction would
be very problematic and I am sure it would be twice as
expensive as a new building. (...) Of course it is my personal
opinion, but if each visit to the national gallery makes me
feel frustrated, I think it is not a good national gallery.” 37
A similar viewpoint was indirectly presented by the architect
Ján Bahna who designed the reconstruction of the Water
Barracks building in the 1990s and had also been working
on the whole premises with his students in his architectural
studio in Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava.
He questioned the structure's load capacity if there would
be changes in the facing or an additional superstructure,
which was immediately disproved by the objective arguments
of the building's structure engineer Jindřich Trailin.
The former Bratislava Chief City Architect Štefan Svetko
also presented his critical view of SNG building (he had had
a crucial role in the change of the front wing concept, which
he did not hide). Svetko did not support the disassembly
or demolition (“slum-clearance”) of the bridging. Interestingly
objective supportive viewpoints were presented not only
by both of the involved structure engineers Jindřich Trailin
and Jiří Kozák but also by the co-founding director of former
state architectural company Stavoprojekt Professor Štefan
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Lukačovič, Dedeček's peers Il’ja Skoček, Ferdinand Milučký
and architects from the younger generation, Martin Kusý,
Ivan Gürtler, Branislav Somora and Boris Hrbáň. Architectural
historian Henrieta Moravčíková and art historians L’uba
Belohradská and Zuzana Bartošová did not support the
possibility of demolition. The sculptor Jozef Jankovič had critical
comments not only on the inadequate function of the gallery
for contemporary art exhibitions but also on the relationship
between the state and the national gallery – he requested
the creation of a contemporary art museum, an art-industry
museum and a contemporary art gallery – a kunsthalle.
The whole discussion that criticized the current cultural
and political situation then gave the impression of favouring
the renewal of the front wing, criticizing the state's inability
to construct buildings for new public cultural institutions and
to care for the existing ones. The questions from the architect
Jaroslav Kilián showed the context of Dedeček's project:
“And so my question is: why should we tear down this
particular gallery? Why not the Danube hotel or something
else? (...) Bratislava started to develop the waterfront
at the end of the last century. This process took place
somewhere under the statue of Maria Theresa, then there
was a break, then Belluš came to continue the process
36 Architects Martin Kusý as the president of Slovak Architects
Society; Branislav Somora as the chairman of Slovak Chamber
of Architects; Ján Bahna, Ivan Gürtler, Jaroslav Kilián, Ivan Matušík
and architects-historians Henrieta Moravčíková and Štefan Šlachta
accepted the invitation of art historian Katarína Bajcurová, the
general director of the Slovak National Gallery, and architecture
historian Dana Bořutová, member of SNG Science Council to
take part in the discussion. The discussion participants also
included architects Štefan Lukačovič, Štefan Svetko, Il’ja Skoček,
Ferdinand Milučký, Jaroslav Liptay, Jozef Šoltés, sculptor Jozef
Jankovič, art historians L’uba Belohradská, Zuzana Bartošová
as well as structural engineers Jindřich Trailin and Jiří Kozák, former
employees of Dedeček’s studio in the state architectural company
Stavoprojekt. The discussion was moderated by art historian
Dana Bořutová. Architect Vladimír Dedeček apologized for his
absence in the panel discussion.
37 [Not signed.] Budúcnost’ premostenia – budúcnost’ SNG? Projekt.
Revue slovenskej architektúry, 43, 2001, No. 2, p. 6.
107

and demolished this square. (...) I would, however, rather look
at the circumstances in which this work was created. High
façades were built in the direction of the waterfront – the
Devín hotel block – and in the rear there are restaurant areas
situated in lower positions whose scale is nearer to the older
housings. Dedeček actually did the same. When I look at the
reconstruction of the Carlton Hotel, the impression you get
from behind the gallery is much bigger in silhouette than the
gallery. That is why these arguments are not so convincing.
(...) The concept of this object [SNG] is exceptional because
it has been a source of discussion from the beginning.
I suppose in twenty years, when we search for objects
whose concept is characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s, this
building will be proposed as a national cultural monument.
Maybe some people do not like to hear this but I think it is
hard to assess the architecture of this period today.” 38
the curator of the document exhibition Dr. Alexandra Kusá,
architects Jaroslav Liptay, Marin Mašek and Peter Žalman as
well as the director of the Slovak Architects Society Peter
Mikloš commented on the history and future of the SNG
building in the magazines Projekt and Arch. 39 Architect Imrich
Vaško compared Dedeček's extension to the late-modern
gallery institutions in the USA. 40
in April – May, the journal Bratislavské noviny published
a series of articles regarding the question of the SNG bridging.
They included opinions from invited participants and were
published under the name “Premostenie galérie by malo
nahradit’ niečo, s čím sa stotožní väčšina Bratislavčanov
(diskusia)” (Gallery bridging should be replaced by something
that most citizens of Bratislava can identify with (discussion). 41
Ministry of Culture spokesperson Juraj Puchý: “The most
acceptable alternative, for now, seems to be to maintain
the SNG bridging. The College of the Ministery of Culture has
recently discussed this question. They have recommended
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not only to reconstruct the whole object but also to rebuild
it so that it can best suit its purpose. It means not only to fix
its state of disrepair, the leaks and similar deficiencies but also
to make the bridging or the whole building operational. The
details of how it could be done are still being discussed.” 42
Štefan Holčík, the director of the Archaeological Museum
of Slovak National Museum, supported the possibility
of tearing down the bridging, while also accepting a rebuild:
“... If I had the power, I would have the extension of the
Slovak National Gallery, the so called ‘bridging’, demolished
without further obstructions. But I understand the viewpoint of
the SNG director who fears the gallery would lose the storage
and exhibition spaces that it needs. However, the ‘modern’
south wing, which is the sticking point, can be adjusted,
rebuilt, humanized. We can find plenty of examples of this
in Europe.” 43
The demolition was consistently supported by Professor
Štefan Šlachta, although in a much sharper way than in
the recent personal discussions in SNG, as a then member
of parliament (1998–2002), under the text he was credited
38 Ibidem, p. 7.
39 See KUSÁ, Alexandra. K výstavbe Slovenskej národnej galérie.
(Výber z faktografie). Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 43,
2001, No. 2, p. 17 and aedem. Vladimír Dedeček – rekonštrukcia
a prístavba Slovenskej národnej galérie. Projekt. Revue slovenskej
architektúry, 43, 2001, No. 2, pp. 18–19. See also LIPTAY, Jaroslav.
Potrebujeme národnú galériu? Pokus o premostenie problémov
“premostenia.” (SNG). Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 43,
2001, No. 3, pp. 68–69; MAŠEK, Martin. Prístavba SNG kontra
katalógový gýč. Arch, 6, 2001, No. 3, p. 2; MIKLOŠ, Peter.
Ako Slovenská národná galéria získala svoje sídlo. Projekt. Revue
slovenskej architektúry, 43, 2001, No. 3, pp. 66–67 and ŽALMAN,
Peter. Niekol’ko poznámok k aktuálnej téme SNG Bratislava.
Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 43, 2001, No. 2, p. 19.
40 VAŠKO, Imro. Paralely. New Ends alebo Čo nového v New Yorských
[newyorských] chrámoch umenia... a na Slovensku... (Boom
galerijného Disneylandu). Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 43,
2001, No. 2, pp. 20–25.
41 Premostenie galérie by malo nahradit’ niečo, s čím sa stotožní
väčšina Bratislavčanov (diskusia). Bratislavské noviny, 4,
19 April 2001, No. 8, p. 6.
42 Ibidem.
43 Ibidem.
109

not as an MP but as “the former dean of the Academy of
Performing Arts [sic!, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, AFAD
in Bratislava]”: “... The first discussion, which was held in
the SNG, showed that the gallery management supported
the preservation of the current state, based on the fictitious
idea that a reconstruction will cost less and a new building
will cost more. Some of the present designers, art historians
and architects also declared that in their opinion the building
should be preserved. The arguments used to support this
opinion were, however, very vague. Statements such as those
saying that a new gallery would ‘surely’ be more expensive,
that the disassembly of the existing construction will be an
insuperably problem, that it is ‘iconoclastic’ having no place
in the beginning of the 21 st century, that the only reason for
the removal of the existing object is the fact that it is a symbol
of socialism, that it is actually good architecture, an example
of an ‘alternative modern style’ or that it is already almost
a cultural monument, are unconvincing and unacceptable for
me. (...) I personally would prefer to disassemble the existing
bridging. I am sure that the persons in charge must find the
courage for such solutions. I have myself protected many
pieces of modern architecture from demolition or inappropriate
interventions. But it has always been in the case of good
architecture. In this case I am convinced that this is bad
architecture. The Slovak National Gallery building should be,
as such, a piece of art. Take some examples – Guggenheim
in New York, MOMA [sic!, MOCA] in Los Angeles, Sainsbury
Wing in London, Hirshorn [Hirshhorn] in Washington,
examples of new galleries and museums in Bonne, Frankfurt,
Stockholm, Helsinki etc. There is no doubt Slovakia and
Bratislava have the architectural potential to be able to
cope with this problem with dignity, to enrich Bratislava and
represent Slovakia, its architecture and culture.” 44
The opinion of another discussion participant with
executive political power, this time in municipal politics, the
Old City Mayor Andrej Ďurkovský was similarly consistent:
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“Bratislava, unfortunately, has inherited several buildings from
the period of socialistic planning that are subject to justified
criticism from the point of view of their effect on city urban
planning as well as from the point of view of their particular
architectural expression. Some of them are even very technical
works (e.g. Nový most bridge) but their negative effect on
the organism of the city is indisputable. / However, I have
no right to be a judge of the past. Moreover, architecture is
not an exact discipline; it is much closer to art and provokes
aesthetic feelings that can vary and differ among individuals.
/ It is one of the reasons why I will limit my comments on
the controversial extension of the Slovak National Gallery
to an observation that is currently most important for me as
a municipal politician: the extension building is non-functional.
We would all incur very high expenses if we tried to
reconstruct it so that it could fully serve its purpose. I definitely
support the possibility of tearing down and replacing it with
something that the majority of the Bratislava and Slovak public
can identify with. In the meantime, the Ministry of Culture
should address the problem of where to put the artworks that
have been to date been housed in the extension building.” 45
The head of the Department of Monuments Protection at
the Monuments Board in Bratislava architect Viera Dvořáková
stated the viewpoint of the Board: “In the 1970s the extension
solved the urgent lack of space in the Slovak National Gallery.
Its appropriateness or inappropriateness in relation to its value
as a cultural monument should have been assessed during
the period of its design and preparation. / Because from the
point of view of general cultural heritage protection, the status
quo, i.e. the bridging, is a part of it regardless of the era,
the ideology with which the building is connected. We would
like to point out that tearing down the building will require
an answer to the question: what happens next? Given the
negative past experiences it is necessary to consider things
thoroughly and BEFOREHAND. We do not think that there
44 Ibidem.
45 Ibidem.
111

[is] a need to build any more so called replicas
in Bratislava.” 46
According to the readers' survey, there were
425 respondents to the question, published on the web site
of this journal before the issue was published: “Should the
extension of the SNG be torn down or not?”. Respondents'
votes: no = 7,5 %, yes = 92,5 % (the editorial staff informed
the readers that attempts to vote repeatedly from one
computer had been blocked).
on 23 rd May an Opinion on the architecture of the
extension of the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava was
established and published with the name Zachovat’ znamená
tvorit’ (To maintain means to create). 47 Winners of the
Emil Belluš Prize, representatives of the Slovak Architects
Society and the Slovak Chamber of Architects, SUT and
AFAD architects-pedagogues and other persons supported
the preservation of the SNG bridging: “We openly say that
the alternative ‘tearing it down’ is unacceptable to us. (…)” 48
The signatories in the order in which they appear beneath the
statement: Tibor Alexy, Andrej Alexy, Ján Bahna, Michal Bogár,
Ivan Gürtler, Karol Chudomelka, Rastislav Janák, L’ubomír
Králik, Martin Kusý, Dušan Kuzma, Ivan Matušík, Ferdinand
Milučký, Pavel Paňák, Štefan Svetko, Branislav Somora, Robert
Špaček, Imrich (Imro) Vaško, L’ubomír Závodný, Peter Žalman,
Miloslav Mudrončík, Boris Hrbáň, Jozef Šoltés, Ladislav Kmet’,
Dušan Čupka, Marta Ščepková, Dušan Bók, Igor Teplan and
Jozef Chrobák.
2002
in the chapter “Moderna značne neskorá” (Modern style
significantly late) the history book: Architektúra Slovenska
v 20. storočí 48 (Slovak Architecture in the 20 th century ) by
Dulla and Moravčíková returns to the question of pre-revolution
(before 1989) monuments as courageous national colossi
that became “empty” or more precisely were emptied during
112

socialism: “Some kind of compensation for the historical
shortage of national institutions was represented by big
unique projects, monuments of national culture. In addition
to the radio building in Bratislava, there emerged the Matica
slovenská building in Martin, the Television Centre in
Bratislava and the extension of the Slovak National Gallery.
(...) The architect of the [SNG] complex Vladimír Dedeček
embodied the spirit of the period with his spacious works
that boldly and self-confidently repeated a single shape motif
and are full of silent emptiness. On the site of the distant
competitors of the University City, there are the shabby torsos
of the Comenius University faculties and on the opposite side,
a little down the river Danube, there is the torso of the new
Incheba in the Bratislava trade fair and exhibition hall (...).
None of the Slovak architects has found the sane courage
to make an object from such colossal elements as, let's say,
the bridge in the Incheba exhibition building that connects
the skyscraper with the exhibition halls or to use layered
broken lines in such a repeating fashion as those in the
Bratislava dormitories (...) or in the Regional political school
in Modra-Harmónia. (...) In Dedeček's work, as he said
himself, ‘to a great extent the construction work’ directly
affects ‘the quality of architecture’ [ Projekt, 1984, No. 2,
p. 23–24 ]. There is no wonder that his buildings became
the subject of sharp criticism after 1989. Their bold, abstract
and empty beauty was disregarded and only the symbols
of an overthrown regime could be seen in them”. 49
2003
From 10 March to 20 May, the first competition for the
Reconstruction and Modernisation of the SNG building
46 Ibidem.
47 Zachovat’ znamená tvorit’. Stanovisko k architektúre objektu
dostavby Slovenskej národnej galérie v Bratislave (petition).
Fórum architektúry, 24, 2001, No. 7–8, p. 11.
48 DULLA, Matúš – MORAVČÍKOVÁ, Henrieta. Architektúra Slovenska
v 20. storočí. Bratislava: Slovart, 2002, p. 511.
49 Ibidem, pp. 226–227.
113

in Bratislava was announced. The jury comprised of Katarína
Bajcurová, Andrej Petrek, Dušan Bálent, Gustav Peichl,
Dana Bořutová, Milan Knížák, Emil Přikryl, Jan Tabor, Norbert
Šmondrk (Emil Přikryl was elected chairman of the jury to
replace the absent Gustav Peichel and he was replaced by
Marek Chalupa). They awarded two first prizes ex aequo
to the design of Juraj Koban and Štefan Pacák (studio KOPA)
and to the design of Il’ja Skoček jr. – Matúš Vallo – Oliver
Sádovský. The second prize was not awarded. The third prize
was awarded to David Kopecký – Ján Studený – Martin Vojta –
Oldřich Skyba. The competition results were not implemented
and two years later the gallery management announced
a new competition.
the question of the competition for the reconstruction
of the SNG and extension were again addressed in the
press in the Projekt and Arch magazines. The director of the
SNG, Dr. Katarína Bajcurová, and the architectural historian
Dr. Henrieta Moravčíková commented on them. An interview
with the chairman of the jury, the Austrian architect Gustav
Peichl was also published. 50
2004
Dedeček's SNG building in Bratislava was opened to
visitors as a part of Days of Architecture. On this occasion,
the architect Peter Žalman published a text 51 based on
interviews with Vladimír Dedeček.
2005
on 7th April, following his lecture at the AFAD in Bratislava
the Dutch architect Willem Jan Neutellings founded the
symbolical Slovak Institute for the Preservation of Communist
Monumental Architectural Heritage (SIPCMAH) (Slovenský
inštitút ochrany pamiatok komunistickej monumentálnej
architektúry (SIOPKMA)) together with architects Imro
Vaško, Zoltán Holocsi, Benjamín Brádňanský and Vít Halada
114

(Department of Architecture of AFAD in Bratislava).
The three “founding works” were: A) Slovak Radio building by
Svetko's collective, B) Dedeček's SNG extension and
C) Jurica – Kozák – Májek – Tomašák's Television transmitter
in Bratislava on Kamzík Hill.
on 23 rd May the procurement process for the design
study for the reconstruction and modernisation of the SNG
buildings in Bratislava was announced. The jury comprised of:
Gustav Peichl (chairman), Peter Pelčák, Andrej Hrausky,
Peter Vitko, Peter Moravčík, Katarína Bajcurová, Andrej Zmeček
and Martin Mašek. They awarded the first prize to Martin Kusý
and Pavol Paňák (Architekti BKPŠ, s. r. o. studio), the second
prize to Eduard and Andrej Šutek (BKPŠ studio) and the third
prize to Gabriel Drobniak – Gabriel Zajíček – Dušan Jurkovič
– Matúš Ivanič.
in an interview with Samuel Abrahám for the Kritika
a kontext magazine, the Bratislava Chief City Architect
Professor Štefan Šlachta returned to the question of socialist
urban planning and the discussion on the relationship between
architecture and totalitarian power: “I think the power was
mainly manifested in the demolition of, let's say, parts of
the Old Town but not only in Bratislava. The authorities tore
50 See: LICHVÁROVÁ, Mária. Rozhovor s profesorom Gustavom
Peichlom. Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry, 45, 2003, No. 4,
pp. 32–33. MIKLOŠ, Peter. S generálnou riaditel’kou SNG Katarínou
Bajcurovou (rozhovor). Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry,
45, 2003, No. 4, pp. 26. MORAVČÍKOVÁ, Henrieta. Sút’až na
rekonštrukciu a modernizáciu areálu Slovenskej národnej galérie.
Arch, 8, 2003, No. 6, pp. 16. [Not signed.] Architektonická sút’až.
Rekonštrukcia a modernizácia areálu SNG v Bratislave. Projekt.
Revue slovenskej architektúry, 45, 2003, No. 4, pp. 14–55.
[Not signed.] Sút’až na SNG a súvislosti. Arch, 8, 2003, No. 6, p. 40.
Sút’ažné návrhy na rekonštrukciu a modernizáciu areálu Slovenskej
národnej galérie v Bratislave. Arch, 8, 2003, No. 6, p. 18–39.
See also KUSÁ, Alexandra. K histórii problematiky Slovenskej
národnej galérie. Arch, 8, 2003, No. 6, pp. 13–15.
51 ŽALMAN, Peter. Pohl’ad spät’. Dni architektúry 2004 pripomenuli
aj tvorbu Vladimíra Dedečka. Projekt. Revue slovenskej architektúry,
46, 2004, No. 3, pp. 61–64.
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down and changed the character of cities from Ružomberok
to Považská Bystrica, Brezová pod Bradlom etc. I believe
that the totalitarian power can particularly be seen in urban
planning. (...) Cities lost their original character and became
disrupted urban structures that today, after 1990, are hard to
stick back together again. It is there where the totalitarianism
can be felt.” 52
Professor Šlachta again summarized the opinion expressed
in the public discussion at the SNG: “It is not important
if I like it [the architecture of SNG] or not. Some may like it,
some may dislike it. For me it is a very aggressive piece of
architecture that does not belong in this environment.” 53
Even now on this occasion he did not reply to his own
question: “I failed to find out who decided that the winning
design for this competition would be V. Dedeček's
submission. (...) The project that was implemented later was
approved by the Ministry of Culture Committee with Ing.
arch. Ivan Šimko, Ing. Šimon Luběna [Kuběna], Ing. Šoula as
experts, all of them from the former Ministry of Construction
and Technology, plus Professor Martin Kusý.” 54
2007
on 29 th March the newspaper Bratislavské noviny
published information about the decision of the Slovak
government to reconstruct the SNG and an interview 55
by Juraj Handzo with the general director of the SNG
Katarína Bajcurová. The statements 56 of one of the
co-authors of the reconstruction, architect Martin Kusý,
were also published on this occasion. The articles triggered
a new wave of criticism by the adversaries of the gallery.
Professor Matúš Dulla again – this time in the introduction
to the architectural guide Slovenská architektúra od Jurkoviča
po dnešok (Slovak Architecture from Jurkovič to the present
day) – commented on the SNG extension: “The era that
ventured to build large housing estates was also able to
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construct big community buildings. At home we still perceive
them as something connected with the freshly overthrown
political period but for foreign visitors they are proof of
a mature architectural culture hidden behind the iron curtain
and under the label of a poorly functional political system.
Let alone the fact that the possibilities provided by the strong
hand of the state were often in compliance with what most
architects’ desire: to be able to realise big dreams and big
works. Thus we see the new building of the Slovak National
Gallery (Vladimír Dedeček) as a simple big bridge in a line of
conventional houses on the Danube waterfront or the strong
gesture of Svetko's group when he overturned the pyramid
and equipped it with a generous system of inner terraces,
creating the Slovak Radio building in Bratislava.” 57
on 14th December the Austrian photographer Hertha
Hurnaus and Austrian architects Benjamin Konrad and
Maik Novotny introduced their book entitled Eastmodern
in the Bratislava Luna bar of the Kyjev Hotel. 58
This book for the first time since 1989 saw some of
the top architectural works of the 1960s and ‘70s in Slovakia
not only as the specters of modern and/or socialistic
52 Rozhovor o architektúre. Štefan Šlachta (Samuel Abrahám).
Kritika a kontext, 9, 2005, No. 2, p. 59.
53 Ibidem.
54 ŠLACHTA, Štefan. Hriechy architektúry. Príroda a spoločnost’, 39,
1990, No. 20, p. 18..
55 Opravu potrebujú všetky galérie (Juraj Handzo's interview
with Katarína Bajcutová). Bratislavské noviny, No. 12, 2007, p. 1.
56 (rob.) Miliardovou obnovou sa chce Slovenská národná galéria
viac otvorit’ l’ud’om. Ibidem, p. 5. .
57 DULLA, Matúš. “Úvod.”. In: Idem. Slovenská architektúra
od Jurkoviča po dnešok. Bratislava: Perfekt 2007, p. 7. See also
Medailóny stavieb p. 15 (Slovak National Archive in Bratislava),
p. 52 (SNG in Bratislava: “The most impressive building of Danube
waterfront is the fourth wing of SNG [bridging].”), p. 54
(Incheba in Bratislava), p. 71 (Slovak Medical University
in Modra-Harmónia), p. 96 (Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra)
and p. 133 (Zvolen University in Zvolen).
58 HURNAUS, Hertha – KONRAD, Benjamin – NOVOTNY, Maik.
Eastmodern. Wien: Springer Wien NY, 2007.
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totalitarian style haunting European Union in crisis, but also
as demonumentalized monuments in the mass of nameless
conventional buildings of the recent past. In addition to the
photographs of the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra the
book also includes three buildings in Bratislava by the architect
Dedeček: The Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic,
the Slovak National Gallery and the Slovak National Archive.
2008
Imro Vaško and Jan Tabor submitted the concept of
an international exposition-confrontation called DEDEČEK
to enter into the competition for the exhibition project followed
by the subsequent implementation of an exposition in the
pavilion of the Czech and Slovak Republics during the
11 th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice: “DEDEČEK
is a kind of catalyst of concrete thinking and the interpretation
of this era that could be called a selective negation of quality.
Prominent personalities who we expect to attend: Elfriede
Jelinek – writer, Ulrich Seidl – film maker, Friedrich Cerha –
composer, Peter Sloterdijk – philosopher, Valie Export –
visual artist.” 59 The project did not win.
Architectural studio zerozero with co-working authors
exhibited in the pavilion in this year's edition. Curatorial
collaboration Monika Mitášová.
2009
February, the Institute of Construction and Architecture of
the Slovak Academy of Sciences published the digital Register
of Modern Architecture on the occasion of the completion
of the exhibition Modern Architecture in the Indices of
Architecture Department and of the colloquium Registration
and protection of modern architecture. At that time it included
150 out of 3,000 selected works, later it was extended to
contain the 500 “most valuable works” inclusive of areas and
constructions by Vladimír Dedeček, including the SNG. 60
118

20 th May – 21 st June, an exhibition of works of the
NL Architects studio represented an international reaction
to the book Eastmodern and to the Bratislava discussion
regarding the demolition, reconstruction or revitalisation
of the front wing of the SNG. These Dutch architects chose
to exhibit in the closed exhibition rooms of the SNG “bridging”.
They preferred the exhibition spaces that were in a state
of disrepair and “out of order” to the “reconstructed” historical
Esterházy palace of the Slovak National Gallery.
NL Architects publicly appealed by means of this
exhibition and also in a press conference to save the Water
Barracks “bridging” and supported the voices against its
demolition. The invitation of this studio to Bratislava as a part
of a Dutch culture festival “Made in Holland, Holland in
Slovakia” was initiated by the photographer Illah van Oijen.
Curatorial collabration Monika Mitášová.
the genesis of Dedeček's project for the SNG was
discussed in a text in the gallery yearbook published by
the curator Monika Mitášová who also placed the architect's
work in the context of 1980s architecture in Slovakia
in the exhibition for that decade 61 .
10 th July, the Slovak National Gallery, the Department
of Architecture of AFAD, the architectural studio of Benjamín
Brádňanský and Víto Halada in cooperation with the
Department of Photography of AFAD, the photography studio
of Filip Vančo and in cooperation with the photographer
59 VAŠKO, Imro – TABOR, Jan: DEDEČEK. Koncept.
Digitálny dokument, p. 1, authors' archive.
60 Ibidem.
61 MITÁŠOVÁ, Monika. K vzniku dostavby SNG. Štyri alternatívy
návrhu Vladimíra Dedečka. In: POLÁČKOVÁ, Dagmar (ed.).
Ročenka Slovenskej národnej galérie v Bratislave – Galéria
2007–2008., Bratislava : SNG, 2009, pp. 53–56; aedem. Drobné
subverzie? Architektúra druhej polovice 80. a začiatku 90.
rokov na Slovensku. In: JABLONSKÁ, Beata (ed.). Osemdesiate.
Postmoderna v slovenskom výtvarnom umení 1985–1992 (katalóg
výstavy). Bratislava: Slovenská národná galéria, 2009.
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Illah van Oijen prepared the first of two meetings with
Vladimír Dedeček's work in the SNG bridging on the occasion
of his 80 th birthday – a temporary installation of architectural
analyses and photographic interpretations of his work.
Curator Monika Mitášová.
The Laudatio was presented by Professor Marián Zervan:
“… Vladimír Dedeček as a member of the third generation
of 20 th century Slovak architects was, like many others, facing
complicated and even insoluble tasks: to build city premises
and housing estates, cultural and shopping buildings, schools
and school premises, sports and multifunctional halls, to
rethink their functionalist postulates in new social conditions,
to continue with the typification and at the same time create
unrepeatable works, to free architecture from pseudohistorical
reminiscences and start a dialogue with world architecture,
to definitively come to terms with the dilemma of folksiness,
national specificity and cosmopolitanism. The results were
singular works or extraordinary artefacts, monumental projects
that were nolens volens assigning the significance to the
socialistic way of life and rituals. In Vladimír Dedeček's work
and in his approach to space and architectural form we can
see a huge effort to demonumentalize and deperfectionize
the architectural testimony using elementary techniques and
yet in very effective ways within these big gestures. It is this
that I feel is Dedeček's shift and deviation from the context
of the third modern generation in Slovakia.
Therefore please allow me to conclude this speech
which is not full of praise and address Vladimír Dedeček,
who is celebrating his 80th anniversary, in the way that
I addressed him in our first meetings, although today's
meeting is, after all, enriched by different knowledges:
Happy Birthday ‘Mr. Architect’.” 62
17 th July, the Slovak National Gallery organized a second
birthday celebration with Vladimír Dedeček in the SNG
bridging: A marathon of fifteen-minute lectures. The presenters
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were the architects Benjamín Brádňanský, Ján Ťupek,
Imro Vaško, historian Peter Szalay, theorist Marián Zervan
from Bratislava and guests from Austria: the curator and
art historian Ingrid Holzschuh 63 and the architect and critic
Jan Tabor. 64 The final speech was given by Vladimír Dedeček.
Theorist Marián Zervan considered and evaluated
Dedeček's work in the Slovak historiography: “In writings
about Vladimír Dedeček and evaluations of his work we can
see myths of two types. Firstly, that no one was writing about
it, i.e. everyone kept silent about it. Secondly, that it was
uncritically accepted in the socialist era and uncritically
condemned after 1989.” 65
Architect and critic Imro Vaško summarized the local
situation and the requests of international architects for the
preservation and protection of modern architectural works
in Slovakia 66 : “While the architecture of parallel modernism
has been overlooked in Slovakia for the past twenty years,
the Dedeček phenomenon has not only been ignored by
retrospective works such as Dejiny slovenského výtvarného
umenia – 20. storočie (History of Slovak Fine Arts –
20 th Century) but also dismissed and negatively evaluated
by the top representatives of the Slovak architectural
community as well as the intellectual and artistic community.
At this time we should mention e.g. the inability of the AFAD
62 ZERVAN, Marián. Laudatio. Digital document, p. 2, author's archive.
63 See HOLZSCHUH, Ingrid. Wiener Stadtplanung im
Nationalsozialismus von 1938 bis 1942. Das Neugestaltungsprojekt
von Architekt Hanns Dustmann. Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2011.
64 See TABOR, Jan. Kunst und Diktatur. Architektur, Bildhauerei und
Malerei in Österreich, Deutschland, Italien und der Sowjetunion
1922–1956. Baden: Grasl, 1994. An exhibition with the same name
took place in his curator concept from 28 March to 15 August 1994
in Künstlerhaus Wien.
65 ZERVAN, Marián. Vladimír Dedeček's work in some books
on Slovak, Czechoslovak as well as world architecture (contribution
presented during the Marathon of fifteen-minute lectures dedicated
to Vladimír Dedeček's architecture in domestic and international
context. 17 July 2009, SNG in Bratislava). Digital document,
p. 3, author's archive.
66 VAŠKO, Imro. Dedeček's generation of Stavoprojekt (contribution
presented ibidem). Digital document, p. 2 Author's archive.
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Arts Council to appreciate the value of the architect
Dedeček's work for Slovak culture. The West has started
to strongly recognise it as interesting, unique and original.
Jan Tabor's energy in promoting Dedeček in Vienna, the
comments of Daniel Libeskind, Greg Lynn, Wolf Prix and
the whole Vienna architecture scene (Roman Delugan,
PPAG...), Jan Neutellings, Peter Cook, Farshid Moussavi
and many others were and still are in strong contrast with
our statements.” 67
The curator and critic Jan Tabor noted in a magazine review
of both above mentiond events: “... Dedeček's persecution
is only a pose of the new heroic anti-communists in the era
of post-communist well-being; the persecution of his
architecture is often just the foolishness of the new era (...)
oh, may it [the SNG bridging] have been done by Koolhaas...,
my Vienna friends keep saying...”. 68
2012
the SNG curator Viera Dlháňová used the example
of SNG building in her contribution that dealt with the issues
of sustainability and protection of the late Modern architecture
in Slovakia 69 .
2013
a group of authors from the Institute of Construction and
Architecture of the Slovak Academy of Sciences renewed the
discussion Moderné a/alebo totalitné v architektúre 20. storočia
na Slovensku, 70 (The Modern and/or the Totalitarian in
20 th Century Architecture in Slovakia), this time in the book
of the main editor Dr. Henrieta Moravčíková, that dealt with the
topic of the totalitarian era architecture from the mid-1990s. 71
In the introduction, Professor Matúš Dulla compared
Slovakia and other European countries (Germany, Italy,
Spain and states of the former socialistic block) with the
terms undemocratic regimes, benevolent totality, totalitarian/
authoritative and authoritarian regimes. This differentiation is
122

not characterised in more detail or further distinguished in other
texts. Professor Dulla puts the relationship between the modern
style and totality as follows: “... In the Slovak environment,
the totalitarian regime managed to implement a unified artistic
direction only for short period and in a restricted way and
anyway the imposed direction was just an echo of a more
distant foreign model. The structures of power were not able
to formulate their own mental image of architecture and thus
it could develop in a relatively peaceful way at least in a latent
relationship with the international discussion. (...) Not even
in the period of the harshest totalitarianism have the local
conditions corresponded to the consistency of build of the
dictatorships such as the Nazi Germany or Stalin Soviet Union.
The term totalitarianism, as defined by Hannah Arendt, therefore
partly corresponds only to conditions of the Slovak state in the
years 1939–1945 and the dictatorship of the Communist Party
of Czechoslovakia in the years 1948–1953.” 72
67 ZERVAN, Marián. Vladimír Dedeček's work in some books on Slovak,
Czechoslovak as well as world architecture (contribution presented
during the Marathon of fifteen-minute lectures dedicated to Vladimír
Dedeček's architecture in domestic and international context. 17 July
2009, SNG in Bratislava). Digital document, p. 3, author's archive.
68 TABOR, Jan. Dedečkiáda. Arch, 14, 2009, No. 7–8, p. 54.
69 DLHÁŇOVÁ, Viera. Memento mori slovenská architektúra.
Miera udržatel’nosti architektúry neskorej moderny na konkrétnom
príklade Dedečkovej prístavby Slovenskej národnej galérie.
In: BODNÁROVÁ, Katarína K. (ed.). Ročenka Slovenskej národnej
galérie v Bratislave – Galéria 2011. Bratislava: Slovenská národná
galéria, 2012, pp. 93–108..
70 MORAVČÍKOVÁ, Henrieta – SZALAY, Peter – DULLA, Matúš –
TOPOLČANSKÁ, Mária – POTOČÁR, Marián – HABERLANDOVÁ,
Katarína. Moderné a/alebo totalitné v architektúre 20. storočia
na Slovensku. Bratislava: Slovart 2013, pp. 90, 91, 93–95, 102, 188,
189, 215, 216. Fig. 15, 19–21, 30 on not numbered pages.
71 HAMMER-MORAVČÍKOVÁ, Henrieta. Bratislava a totalitné idey
minulosti. Architektúra a urbanizmus, 28, 1994, No. 1–2, p. 22–33.
See also STOLIČNÁ, Elena. S pečat’ou svastiky. Architektúra
a urbanizmus, 34, 2000, No. 3–4, pp. 133–138.
72 DULLA, Matúš. Benevolentná totalita: mlčanlivá diskusia
moderného s tradičným v slovenskej architektúre 1939–1956.
In: MORAVČÍKOVÁ, Henrieta – SZALAY, Peter – DULLA, Matúš –
TOPOLČANSKÁ, Mária – POTOČÁR, Marián – HABERLANDOVÁ,
Katarína. Moderné a/alebo totalitné v architektúre 20. storočia
na Slovensku. Bratislava: Slovart 2013, nonpaginated.
123

Selected works of Vladimír Dedeček are published in
this context together with the works of Belluš, Chorvát,
Kusý, Svetlík, Kroha and the group, Kuzma, Svetko, Matušík,
Chovanec, Mlynárčik with Mecková and Kupkovič within the
performance of two international research tasks: a project
called Architecture of totalitarian regimes of the 20 th century
in city management in Southern and Eastern Europe and
a project called Differentiated typology of modernism:
a theoretical basis for the maintenance and renewal of modern
architectural works in Slovakia. The author of the introduction
justified their unification in one book by the controversy of the
conservative and the modern (it means neither the classical
and the modern, nor the conservative and the progressive)
in 20 th century architecture in Slovakia.
in a review of this book, Jan Tabor pointed out the
importance of research as well as the problems concerning the
terms and concepts used: “We could keep arguing about the
term totalitarian forever. This attribute is pejorative in a totalitarian
way and tempts us into a mistaken view that the state or
official architecture of any state that has been assigned with
this ideologically motivated attribute is necessarily totalitarian
too. (...) It is usually also unfair to the architects who were
designing and building, and making mistakes in the conditions
in which they had to live, which, however, they mostly rejected,
very often with their own high quality architecture.” 73 Tabor's
review highlights that 20 th and 21 st century architecture that is
officially supported by dictatorships, centralized governments
and political groups that (not even today) tolerate no opposition,
does not always have to be as defined, i.e. totalitarian from the
nature of the power of the state. The architectural differentiation
in undemocratic systems can be jointly formed – and in some
works they are provably jointly formed – by polemic, subversive
and critical procedures of creation that can be distinguished
and are different from those that are being nodded over by
the established state power regime.
124

architect Paňák's article on the reconstruction of the
SNG building was published in Architektúra a urbanizmus
magazine 74 .
2015
23 rd – 27 th March, the Faculty of Architecture SUT
in Bratislava and the Department of Architecture of Residential
Buildings under the leadership of the architect Štefan Polakovič
co-organized an international architectural workshop called
Zhorela SNG v Bratislave – ako d’alej? (SNG in Bratislava
has burned down – what shall we do now?). Students
of architecture from Paris, Venice, Stuttgart and Bratislava
schools also considered the future of the Slovak Radio building
by Štefan Svetko and the Most SNP bridge in Bratislava by
the architectural group of the architect Jozef Lacko.
2016
on 18 th January the reconstruction of the SNG buildings
in Bratislava began. The studios of the Department of
Architecture of AFAD and the Faculty of Architecture of SUT
started to work on the theme of “iconic ruins” and, within that
framework, also on alternative designs for reconstruction,
renewal and rebuilding projects for the SNG.
an exhibition project was launched for the 15 th International
Architecture Exhibition in Venice
on 26 th February, the newspaper Denník N published
an article 75 by Jana Németh about the project for the
15th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice along with an
interview with its co-author and curator Professor Marián Zervan.
73 TABOR, Jan. Dilema dějin slovenské moderny: skvělé stavby
ze zlých časů. Arch, 18, 2013, No. 12, pp. 64–65.
74 PAŇÁK, Pavol. Rekonštrukcia a dostavba areálu Slovenskej
národnej galérie v Bratislave. Architektúra a urbanizmus, 47, 2013,
No. 3–4, pp. 266–279.
75 NÉMETH, Jana. Kto by sa pobil o Slovenskú národnú galériu.
Denník N, 26 February 2016, pp. 22–23.
125

on 14 th March, the Týždeň magazine published articles
by architects Matúš Vallo 76 and Ján Bahna 77 which
commented on the Slovak National Gallery.
Ján Bahna wrote about Dedeček: “This architect was
almost unknown to the Prague Spring generation.
The theorists also showed no great interest in the work
of this titan of typification. Everything began after the book
Eastmodern was published in 2007 in which two Slovak
expatriates discovered Slovak monuments from the socialist
era. (...) Architect Dedeček became active in the period
of sorela [Socialist Realism]. He was inspired at that time
by the architectural icon Oskar Niemeyer. The elements
of monumental Brazil impressed the young graduate and
he implemented them in his works in the smaller Slovakia.
It was still logical in Nitra [Slovak University of Agriculture in
Nitra]. However, when he entered the city with these solitaires,
he crashed with an existing structure. He had big problems
with the Slovak National Gallery, his wife [art historian, SNG
Drawing Collection curator Ol’ga Dedečková] suffered from
them and the public suffered from them too. The building
has never been completely finished. [Slovak actor] Milan
Lasica writes in his letters to [his friend, Slovak actor] Stano
Štepka in the Slovenské pohl’ady magazine: ‘When this
Le Corbusier of the third generation, the designer of the
National Gallery, was asked questions about his project he
replied with the typical arrogance that he is creating works
for the 21 st century.’” 78
Architect Matúš Vallo, who is two generations younger
to architect Ján Bahna wrote: “It is the opportunities that often
make the difference. Of course, no contract or client can help
an architect who does not take his/her job seriously and does
not have some additional value – talent, experience
or an open mind. / In the past this was very much the truth
about Vladimír Dedeček. As he told me with modesty
in the interview for this magazine [.týždeň], the attention
he is being currently given is also the result of the fact
126

that he had the chance to work on buildings that were less
limited by normative rules and functions than his other
similarly excellent colleagues. It seems to me that architect
Dedeček, said to have been an uncompromising ‘tough guy’
in the past, is exaggerating things with his modesty. (...)
If it has not been clear so far from this text, I belong to the
generation of architects who greatly acknowledge Dedeček
and consider him to be a reference to which we
can constantly return without the eternal need for aids like
‘the Slovak context’ or ‘it was different era’. I am sure we
don't have to keep explaining that this reference is unique.
The theorists or architectural historians have been doing
this for years. Although they fail to get out of their shells
and present Dedeček to the non-professional public
in an understandable way, the truth remains the truth.
Dedeček is world-class. Even though the frequency
of questions such as: ‘And you really like that gallery?’
is not decreasing, at least in my case (e.g. from the chief
editor of this magazine [.týždeň]).” 79
The .týždeň did not publish the response of Marián Zervan
and Monika Mitášová to the statements of Ján Bahna.
on 11 th April, Patrik Garaj published an interview 80
with architect Ján Studený about the exhibition project for
the 15 th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.
76 VALLO, Matúš. Architekt príležitosti. týždeň, 14 March 2016.
77 BAHNA, Ján M. Dedeček a SNG z iného pohl’adu. .týždeň, 14 March
2016.
78 Ibidem.
79 VALLO, Matúš. Architekt príležitosti. (Bibliographic reference in
footnote No. 76).
80 Budovu SNG vyvezieme do Benátok. Interview of Patrik Garaj with
Ján Studený. Trend, 11 April 2016.
127

05.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
marián zervan

Study model of the Slovak National Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts and Design
in Bratislava, 2016. Plexi-glass. Courtesy of exhibition authors and curators.
129

This project The Care for Architecture: Asking the Arché of Archi -
tecture to Dance was initiated by cooperation between Petr
Hájek – Vít Halada’s studio (Faculty of Architecture and Academy
of Fine Arts and Design /AFAD/, Department of Architecture),
Ján Studený – Benjamín Brádňanský’s studio (AFAD, Department
of Architecture) and architectural theorist Marián Zervan
(AFAD and Trnava University, Department of Theory and History
of Arts). It was developed further in cooperation with architectural
theorist Monika Mitášová (Trnava University, Department
of Theory and History of Arts) and exhibition commissioner The
Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava. What they have in common
is their lasting interest in the work of the architect Vladimír
Dedeček. This can be found not only in their attitudes to the
Slovak National Gallery edifices and other of his architectural
works but also in a number of events / see Chronology, p. 119–120 /. Just
to mention a few of them, there are studio analyses of Vladimír
Dedeček’s works or shared inter-studio project Iconic ruins
in which students of architecture deal with the renewal and
reconstruction of significant works from the 1960s and 70s in
Slovakia, including the buildings of Vladimír Dedeček.
The authors of the project, who are also its curators, have
decided to show various ways of dealing with one of Vladimír
Dedeček’s most significant as well as controversial works –
the Slovak National Gallery area, designed and built between
1962 and 1979, and exhibit them in the national pavilion of the
Czech and Slovak Republics. In various ways the authors of the
exhibition project show the whole range of changes during the
period of design, construction and use as well as the renewal
and reconstruction: from changes in the project documentation
to changes in shape, materials, technical equipment and various
versions of use of the functioning or closed premises. Including
its rebuilding, as well as a range of competitions and creative
workshops aimed solely at the development of the testimony of
the SNG buildings. The authors also show the manifold reactions
of jury members, Slovak and foreign architects of different
generations who had either visited the SNG or held lectures
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there, leading political and cultural representatives and the media
as well as professionals, non-professional and the general
public that the project and the final approved work raised from
the time of its birth to 2016.
Following the announcement of the theme of the 15 th International
Architecture Exhibition in Venice the authors focused
on the differentiation of various forms of care for architecture
but also aimed to distinguish care (Sorge) from well-meant
solicitude (Fürsorgen) without project or the various forms of
pragmatic calculus concerned (concern, Besorgen) in the fight
for the premises of the SNG. Working on this differentiation and
as an alternative to a fight and a clash at the front-line, they
offer a creative response of various architectural projects whose
dance can give rise to unexpected solutions. The authors present
this solution in the form of a diagram of options originating
partly from Dedeček’s projects’ phases but especially from
the architectural competition projects, workshops and studio
designs dealing with SNG’s reconstruction and rebuilding.
The form of the project presentation corresponds to the differentiating
movement and solution. The central object of the pavilion
is a three-dimensional metal model of the Slovak National Gallery
premises in red, corresponding to the constructed premises on
a reduced scale (1:17,78). The red colour, however, was just one
of its colours, while the most distinctive polarity was the relationship
between red and white. Some parts of the metal model are
walkable and this makes it possible to see and understand some
of the Dedeček’s original constructional and spatial solutions
of the premises that contain compositional and cluster arrangements
of agoras, amphitheatres, odea, pavilions and galleries.
The model stands in the middle between the two side walls of
the pavilion. The longer parallel walls represent two environments,
two different strategies: the environment of fight, clash and the
strategy of concern (Besorgen), solicitude (Fürsorgen) and the
documentation of Dedeček’s work on one side, and the environment
that asks the arché of Dedeček’s architecture to dance with
the strategy of care (Sorge), and project on the other side.
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The entrance wall in-between contains one introductory
screen. This screen shows the diagrams of the two longer pavilion
walls: the “fight wall” and the “dance wall”. The layout of
the “dance wall” follows an introductory part of a music score
featuring folk dance motives by a Slovak composer Ilja Zeljenka
( Musica slovaca. Composition for Violin and String Orchestra
on Folk Songs from Čičmany, 1975). This screen also shows
the basic Care for Architecture exhibition project data, its mission
statement, project description and the names of the authors,
curators, commissioners and participating authors. The exhibition
catalogue graphic concept by architect and graphic designer
Kateřina Koňata Dolejšová (2016) is shown here as well.
On the fight side, there are six screens placed as signs of
battle positions. The first screen shows Jana Durajová’s documentary
containing the memories of the designer Vladimír
Dedeček, comments by architectural historian Peter Szalay, the
SNG director Alexandra Kusá, critical statements from the archaeologist
and expert in the history of Bratislava Štefan Holčík
and several citizens of Bratislava and visitors.
On the second you can see a set of photographs of the
SNG building by the outstanding Austrian photographer
Hertha Hurnaus who is a co-author of the book Eastmodern
(2007) and is cooperating on the upcoming book on the work
of Vladimír Dedeček.
The third screen presents documentary photographs (2011)
by the photographer Daša Barteková who has been engaged
for long period in documenting the SNG building and its events.
The fourth screen shows visitors the extensive discussions
about the SNG premises held in the pages of the newspaper
Bratislavské noviny from 2001 up to practically 2016, contributions
from important figures in Slovak architectural and cultural
life and citizens of Bratislava. This has been the broadest critical
platform for stands on the SNG building.
The fifth screen presents the opinions of international architects
who have exhibited in the SNG buildings or have held
lectures there and written about it: Greg Lynn, Kamiel Klaasse
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(NL Architects), Jan Tabor, Benjamin Konrad and Maik Novotny
(co-authors of Eastmodern book).
The sixth screen is dedicated to the attitudes of Slovak
architects and Slovak cultural representatives in video-documentary
by Jana Durajová and Lena Kušnieriková (2016).
There are six screens also on the wall of understanding,
project and dance. The first screen contains the project documentation
of the individual phases of the SNG construction
by the architect Vladimír Dedeček (1962, 1963, 1967–1979).
The second screen presents the SNG building analysis by
authors of the upcoming book on Vladimír Dedeček’s architecture:
Benjamín Brádňanský, Vít Halada, Monika Mitášová and
Marián Zervan.
The third screen shows selected competition projects from
Slovak and foreign architects from the first SNG reconstruction
competition in 2003 plus the competition projects from Slovak
and Czech architects from the second SNG rebuilding and
modernization competition in 2005.
The fourth screen shows architectural designs from various
international student workshops and studio assignments dealing
with SNG area / see Chronology, p. 119,125 /.
The fifth screen is dedicated to artistic interpretations. It presents
a video by visual artist Anna Daučíková that deals with the
gallery as an institution (the work: Monika Mitášová with SNG,
2009, from the cycle Portrait of a Woman with Institution) filmed
in the closed SNG bridging, plus a video of an “exhibition” in the
SNG bridging model by visual artist Stanislav Masár (2016).
The sixth screen represents the project documentation of the
SNG reconstruction and building conversion by architects Martin
Kusý and Pavol Paňák (2005) and the visualisation of the eventual
state of the ongoing reconstruction and rebuilding. Projects are
accompanied by student works of three studios: Hájek – Halada’s
studio (2016) and Studený – Bradňanský’s studio at Academy of
Fine arts and Design in Bratislava (2016) and Hájek – Hulín’s
studio at Czech Technical University in Prague. These projects
are a constant and never-ending invitation to dance.
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Metal exhibition model variants in pavilion, digital visualisation, 2016.
Courtesy of exhibition authors and curators.
134 | 135

06.
PHOTOS OF THE SNG MODEL

Metal exhibition model (1:17,78) of the Slovak National Gallery built edifices
and historical Watter Barracs, May 2016, Zbečno, Czech Republic.
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This publication was made possible by the generosity
of Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava,
Trnava University in Trnava,
and Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Architecture
scholarly editing : prof. Miroslav Marcelli, doc. Oldřich Ševčík
exhibition commisioners : Monika Mitášová, Monika Palčová,
Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava 2016
Care (Sorge ) for Architecture
Asking the Arché of Architecture to Dance
editor, coauthor of architectural and textual interpretation © Marián Zervan 2016
coauthor of architectural and textual interpretation
and author of supplements © Monika Mitášová 2016
authors of architectural interpretation
© Benjamín Brádňanský, Vít Halada 2016
Co-authors: Monika Mitášová, Marián Zervan 2016
In collaboration with: Andrej Strieženec, Mária Novotná, Anna Cséfalvay, Danica Pišteková 2016
authors and curators of the exibition
© Benjamín Brádňanský, Petr Hájek, Vít Halada, Ján Studený, Marián Zervan 2016
In collaboration with: Martin Stoss, Terezie Keilová 2016
photographs © Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava, TASR and Benedikt Markel 2016
translators © Michael Frontczak (01-03), Silvia Holéczyová (04-05) 2016
graphics © Kateřina Koňata Dolejšová 2016
printing and binding : Vlado Šebek, OPUS VDI, Prague 2016
publisher © Česká technika – nakladatelství ČVUT 2016
Česká technika – nakladatelství ČVUT, Thákurova 1, 160 41 Praha 6,
www.cvut.cz/ceska-technika-nakladatelstvi-cvut
Art-Now Foundation 2016, Grafická 20, 150 00 Prague 5, www.art-now.cz
First edition
isbn