sng_2016-05-12_high-single-crop_k3

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.
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