PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Kalina, Pavel
TI  - The Industrial Palace at the Prague Exhibition Centre. Traditional symbolism and modern construction
DP  - 2019 Jun 15
TA  - Staletá Praha
PG  - 2--25
VI  - 35
IP  - 1
AID - 10.56112/sp.2019.1.01
IS  - 02316056
AB  - The article deals with the political and social background of the General Land Centennial Exhibition, held in 1891 in Prague (Prague Jubilee Exhibition), and interprets the central structure of the exhibition - the Industrial Palace. Technical models of this building are searched for, other than in Paris, which has been unilaterally highlighted in present publications. The design of the Industrial Palace was based on wider tradition of typology, construction practice and related theory connected with the construction of large glass halls, mainly railway and exhibition halls, developed in the third quarter of the 19th century not only in England (Crystal Palace, 1851) and France (Galerie des Machines, 1889), but especially in areas linguistically and geographically much closer, in neighbouring Germany especially. Czech designers and builders, as Bedřich Münzberger, the author of the Industrial Palace, almost undoubtedly knew German publications and, of course, related buildings such as the monumental railway station in Berlin (old Ostbahnhof, 1866/1867) or the brand new railway station in Frankfurt am Main (Centralbahnhof, 1888), and could be inspired by their technical potential. The embellishment of the Industrial Palace, which could have been developed because of its massive walled parts, reflected the political program of the Czech conservative nobility, postponed to oblivion by electoral reforms at the beginning of the 20th century and later by the proclamation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918.