Photo: Ian Willoughby, Radio Prague International
Jakub Cigler is perhaps THE architect of post-1989 Prague. His Jakub Cigler Architekti are behind the ongoing remodeling of Wenceslas Square and have also designed such buildings as Quadrio, Florentinum and The Park in Chodov. The studio is also involved in the massive project to overhaul Masaryk Train Station and the surrounding area. I spoke to Jakub Cigler, who is 61, at his company’s offices in the Podolí district.
You grew up in Malá Strana. How was that?
“It is possible to find the places where it is kind of still old Malá Strana.”
“It was basically a village in the very centre of Prague.
“In my childhood there were no tourists, I would say, at all, because Western countries were completely isolated from us – or the opposite: we were isolated from them!
“As I said, it was a village where there were mostly old people – and a very old-fashioned way of living; there were gas lamps.
“I was born in a relatively newly built house – it was from 1938.
“So it was slightly different experience from that of, for example, my school mates from elementary school.
“When I visited them they had very simple, primitive kind of, I would say, medieval [laughs] standards!
“Since then wherever I lived outside Malá Strana I was always kind of starving [laughs].
“So after a couple of years of living in other districts of Prague I bought a flat and I live there now, again.
“It’s very different today, but it is possible to find the places where it is kind of still old Malá Strana.”
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