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Photography © alex shoots buildings


Brno, is inextricably tied up with the country’s communist past. And despite the light nature of the refurbishment project undertaken by dynamic local practice Chybik + Kristof, the scheme to bring brightness and transparency to a neglected asset has made it a symbol of the city’s future, and a break from the past. Bus terminals, as practice co-founder Ondrej Chybik asserts, are not only central to the urban fabric, they’re “windows on the city,” creating the lasting impression visitors have, being the “first thing they see when they arrive, and the last thing when they leave.” Zvonarka is important for the whole region of Moravia, with connections


T


he history of the central bus terminal in the Czech Republic’s second city (and former textile powerhouse)


across the country, and also internationally on the route east to Kiev. The building is hard to miss, a vast, concrete slab supported by steel


100 m2


columns and beams, but it makes efficient use of its city centre site by accommodating a parking area for buses on the upper level. However, it had become a “dark, dirty, and dangerous’ place for users (including Ondrej himself, a non-car driver, and his partner at the practice Michal Kristof), and was a blot on the city’s reputation. The brutalist structure, despite its condition, was an important example of the city’s heritage for the architects. It was designed by Czech architect Radúz Russ and built in 1988, with a complex, extensive network of diagonal steel beams supporting the roof, and exposed concrete


ADF OCTOBER 2021


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