The Praha Spa Building, built at the same time as the reconstruction of the nearby Bečva sanatorium, stands out for its “villa” character, which was supposed to induce a pleasant, un-hospital-like feeling in the patients. The smaller scale and unusual segmented shape of the building, as well as its location on the slope of the park, providing impressive views, helped achieve this goal.
In 1930 the spa was acquired by the Central Social Insurance Company in Prague, which gradually modernised it. In addition to renovations, it also envisaged new buildings. One of the first was the Praha Spa Building, the name and design of which were intended to determine the supra-regional direction of the spa. The authorship of the project from 1931 was long attributed to Alois Jambor the younger, an architect and builder, the owner of the largest construction company in the city, and the originator of many local buildings. However, the building differs significantly from his designs and its conception exceeds them considerably. Jambor usually realised the work of other fellow-architects, and this was also the case with the Praha Spa Building. The author of the original design was the Prague architect Emil Šulc, who is mainly associated with the construction of family homes in Prague.
The author belonged among those architects who did not create modern trends in architecture, but were inspired by them. Up to then he had been unable to move from a constructivist position to the purely functionalist forms that his numerous contemporaries, a generation younger than him, were developing at that time. This corresponds to the symmetrical layout of the building, its distinctive cornices and parapets, or the almost castle-like entrance staircase. The five-storey building on the ground plan of a segment of a circle, with rows of loggias on each floor, a flat roof, and terraces, nevertheless brought a breath of the big city into the small-town spa park. Thanks to its distinctive concept, the sanatorium can be considered one of the most important realisations in the spa area and has also become a significant example of the application of constructivist approaches in Hranice.
The building underwent extensive reconstruction in the 1980s, when its original appearance was somewhat weakened. The last major reconstruction took place in 2015–2017. For safety reasons and because of savings and hygiene standards, the internal layout was changed and the number of rooms reduced, so that now each guest has their own bathroom. The exterior terraces, the interior staircase with handrails and terrazzo landings, and the entrance hall with ceiling reliefs have undergone renovations that honour their original forms.
LJ (translation by SG)
Selected literature:
Tomáš Pospěch, Hranice, Teplice nad Bečvou a okolí. Architektura 1815–2018, Hranice 2018.
Tomáš Pospěch, Hranická architektura 1815–1948, Hranice 2000.
Pavel Zatloukal – Vítězslav Kollmann, Moravské lázně v proměnách dvou staletí (exhibition catalogue) Oblastní galerie výtvarných umění v Olomouci 1987.
Oskar Poříska, Rozvoj léčebných lázní v Československu 1918–1968, Architektura ČSR 28, 1969, č. 3, pp. 168–170.
