Return of the Blob: Prague's unusual National Library project may not be dead after all

The infamous Blob building, proposed for Prague’s Letná Plain back in 2007 but never built, refuses to definitively go away.

The latest
development is that Eliška Kaplický Fuchsová, the widow of
architect Jan Kaplický, has signed a memorandum with National
Library (NK) director Martin Kocanda and Culture Minister Antonín
Staněk (ČSSD), giving the author’s rights and project
documentation to the building to the state.

This would allow the National Library to build the structure in the future, but that eventuality is far from certain. First, a government resolution declaring the project dead would have to be revoked.

The conditions of
the memorandum are that the Blob, known by its supporters as the Eye
Over Prague, would be built on its original proposed place at Letná,
and that architects from Kaplický’s firm Future Systems would
supervise any future development.

Before the project
was canceled, other locations such as Pankrác, Stodůlky and Strahov
were considered.

Prague City Hall
also currently has no interest in the Blob being made, and in January
2019 backed out of a new study on the feasibility of the project. The
study had been commissioned by the previous city administration, in
which Kaplický Fuchsová had served as a city councilor for the ANO
party until October 2018.

The city would have
to approve the use of the land, which is part of a city park. Current
City Councilor Hana Třeštíková (Praha sobě), responsible for
culture, said that nobody has approached the city about using the
land.

Kaplický’s
winning design caused an outcry at the time from both the public and
politicians.

After Kaplický won
the NK architectural contest in 2007, then-president Václav Klaus
and Prague’s then-mayor Pavel Bém (ODS) opposed its construction,
claiming it was out of character for the city.

The Blob has made
several appearances. A small version of its facade has been
incorporated into a bus stop in Brno, and a video-mapping of its
shape was projected onto a tent in 2015 during the Letní Letná
theater festival in Prague’s Letná park, not far from the originally
planned building site.

Kaplický was born April 18, 1937, and grew up in Prague’s Ořechovka neighborhood. He studied at the College of Applied Arts and Architecture and Design (VŠUP) in Prague, but went to London in 1968 after the Soviet-led invasion crushed the Prague Spring. In 1979 Kaplický set up his own architectural think tank called Future Systems with David Nixon.

Kaplický died in 2009, still hoping that the Eye Over Prague would be built,