sng_2016-05-12_high-single-crop_k3

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