The building of the Electric Companies of the capital city of Prague, later also known as the building of the Transport Companies, is based in Holešovice, Prague 7 right in front of the Hlávkův Bridge at the beginning of Bubenská Street. It’s also very close to the Vltavská metro station, Strossmayer Square, and Bubny Railway Station. This building, designed in a functionalist architectural style has a reinforced concrete structure, large blue windows and cream-white tile cladding and is protected as a cultural monument.
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The history of the building
The building was constructed between 1927 and 1935 based on a design by Adolf Benš and Josef Kříž. Staff started to move in to the building in 1934, but minor building work was still happening until 1938.
If the design of this building is somewhat familiar to you, it’s because you might have noticed the Terminal 4 building at the Prague Airport, which was also designed by Adolf Bens. The building has a very similar style with white tiles and blue windows.
The building was build on a piece of land, which previously had a Böhm brothers’ hat factory.
The construction of the new building, which was ceremoniously opened on March 7, 1935, on the 85th birthday of President T. G. Masaryk, created 33,000 m² of office space with then state-of-the-art, very modern equipment.
For example, the building was the first ever fully air-conditioned building in the whole Czechoslovakia. The American airconditioning company Carrier installed the system and it was their first installation in the whole Europe.
The building also has a pair of paternoster elevators, which have been carefully restored and are still in working order and being used on daily basis by the employees.
Apart from the offices for the Electric Companies staff, the building also had public cinema rooms, which were used to promote the company, large rooms were dedicated to the travel ticket pre-sales and there was also a spacious cultural hall and an archive. What was perhaps unusual at the time, was that the building also included a medical center and spa facilities for the employees of the Electric Companies.
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The company
The Electric Companies of the city of Prague had several functions. As the title suggests, they dealt with ‘electricity’ but at the time, this included the electrical trams system, supply of electricity to private homes and also electrical household equipment. This ment that you could come to buy your seasonal tram ticket and also test and buy a new vacuum cleaner at the same time.
It’s not surprising that later this company split into more specific companies, which were: Prague Public Transit Company, Prague Electric Company, Public Lighting Administration and Prague Energy Company.
The Prague Public Transit Company had its headquarters here until it moved to a new building on Sokolovská Street in Vysočany in early 2000, the branch office of the Electric Railways was located here until 2002). The state enterprise Elektropodnik Praha was based here until 1991, when it changed its headquarters to Vladislavova Street in New Town.
Reconstruction during 80s & 90s
The building underwent insensitive reconstructions in the 80s and 90s and the access to the building has also changed with widening the roads in front of the building, adding an underground station and more tram lines. Today, it looks like the building is hemmed in by roads trams and the passing traffic.
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The Modern Reconstruction in 2018-2020
Reconstruction In the fall of 2018, an extensive reconstruction of this building began based on the project of the TaK Architects office led by architect Marek Tichý. The investor was the company CPI Group, with Metrostav a.s. serving as the general contractor. Due to the emergency condition of the facade, the building was stripped down to its skeleton, and it was also necessary to stabilize the foundations made of alumina concrete by micropiling. The original external tile cladding by the RAKO brand was replaced by a copy, allegedly made in China (unfortunately, the white is in a different shade and corner tiles are missing, plus the shard is no longer as thick – only 8mm). In the interior, due to current requirements, the original layout of small enclosed offices was changed to larger open-plan spaces (except for the 1st floor). The reconstruction was completed in 2020, with costs reaching 1.3 billion CZK.
The building’s reconstruction won one of the ten titles of Building of the Year 2021, and also received the public award “Monuments Thank You” in the eighth edition of the Patrimonium pro futuro awards, announced by the National Heritage Institute. Currently, Bubenská 1 is the headquarters of the communications group WPP. The new WPP Campus thus creates a space for creative work and collaboration for more than a thousand specialists in advertising, data, media, and PR.
![](https://www.viewfromprague.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Stairs-at-the-electric-buildings-View-from-Prague.jpg)
What you can find inside the building
The northern wing with the so-called railway hall served the transport division of the Electric Companies. The southern wing, known as the power station wing, served the energy division, and the western part of the building was used as the medical and spa centre for employees.
Basement
In the basement, there are several lecture halls and a cinema hall, originally used for the promotion of the Electric Companies. These are currently still undergoing restoration and are not open to the public. They were badly damaged in the 2002 Prague floods.
Another modern invention, which was originally in the basement, was a car lift and parking spaces for the company employees. Today, this space is again used for parking, but this time the car parking is done by an automated parking system, where the car is parked for you by a machine. This saves the parking space for up to 40% and the company can fit more cars in. This must be a great perk for the staff, as parking places in Prague are rare and expensive.
Ground Floor
As you walk in, the large entrance hall has a height of the four main floors and it’s beautifully lid by the large double walled windows (which are also part of the original airconditioning set up).
The large staircase, with stairs on both sides is opposite the entrance. On the sides of the entrance hall, there are two halls: the southern hall was used for customer contact for electricity consumption and for promotion, while in the northern hall, there were ticket offices for season travel passes, which were still in use in the 1970s. The side and rear entrances were intended for employees and were guarded by doormen. You can also see side doors market with phone symbol, which originally had public payphones inside.
1st Floor
Originally, this is where you would find the company accounts department. The offices were set up as large continuous halls only divided by low partitions. This floor also had a telephone exchange, electrical workshops and town municipal offices.
2nd to 5th Floor
These floors had all the additional offices of the Electric Companies. The wings have four floors each, while the central part has six floors (the last one is set back to the building). To get around the building, there are main and secondary staircases, extra corridors and elevators. The entire building has four shafts running through, which hide the ventilation, electrical cables, pneumatic mail, and waste.
6th Floor
The sixth floor was used as a large canteen for the staff, which also had access to the terrace where the staff could relax and enjoy their breaks. The building was designed, so that if necessary, two more floors could be added to the central part without any issues as the set up, cables and infrastructure was already there.
The air conditioning ducts ended on the fifth floor as the 6th floor was designed with windows that ment to be open.
Western Wing of the Building
This part is actually a separate building and has its own entrance from the church. Before the state nationalization in 1948, this part of the building was used as the heath and spa centre for employees.
Since the building already had suitable layout and equipment, the National Health Institute Polyclinic of Prague 7 was located here, including a pharmacy (you can still see a dispensing window on the 1st floor near the staircase; from the 1990s and a large pharmacy was based on the ground floor), and a rehabilitation department in the basement. Since the government didn’t pay attention to the upkeep of the building, the basement stopped being used after 1990s because it started to become dilapidated. The health polyclinic was moved out before the renovations in 2018.
The building is also connected to the Vltavská metro station by a painted staircase and underpass, which was painted in 2021 by the artist Petr Sokol. Although it might not look like it, the painted area is over 200 m² and is the largest graphics in public space in the Czech Republic. The illustrations show significant buildings in Prague 7 as well as the history and future of the Electrical company building.
Signs on the top of the building
The original sign on the top of the building red: Elektricke Podniky (Electrical Enterprises or Companies). After the nationalisation, the building sign was changed to: Slava Komunismu’ (Glory to Communism) and a large red star was added to the lower terrace. Finally the sign today reads ‘ Bubenska 1, WPP’ (WPP is the name of the current owner of the building).
Quirky things not to miss
As you can see the building is very large and when it was build it was shiny white with gleaming white tiles. During the 2nd war war there was a worry, that such a large white building can become an easy target, so the whole building was painted dark green colour. Whilst this strategy worked, it was super difficult to remove the paint from the tiles after the war and the tiles were damaged by the type of turpentine they used to take the paint off.
The front entrance had a two large bronze statues – one was representing Transport and the other Electricity and both were made by sculptor Jiří Ducháček. But as you can see today, the statues are no longer there as they disappeared at the beginning of the 2nd war war. Nobody really knows what happened to them, but my hunch is that they were melted down together with church bells to make weapons by the occupying German Government.
The floods in 2002
Perhaps the biggest impact on the life of the building was the 2002 flood, which flooded the large culture hall in the basement. Apparently, right after the floods, the large hall looked like a huge pool, with a grand piano floating in the middle. When the water receded, the whole wooden floor peeled off and underneath it was discovered that under the hall floor there were three large water wells that once were used as a water source for the local brewery. Any excess water from the wells was originally diverted into a tunnel that leads to the Vltava River, protected by a non-return water valve. However, the water valve could not withstand the pressure of the water in the river during the floods, which meant that, although the building is high above the level of the Vltava river, it was filled with water!
The culture hall
In 1992, the hall was used for a new music club called ‘Belmondo’ which hosted many popular rock Czech bands over the years until 2009. After that the cultural hall was used for more mainstream events, including classical dancing lessons, workshops, book readings and events for children.
This blog post was originally written on 19 May 2024 and last updated on 19 May 2024
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