Sídliště I housing estate

   
The need for new flats in Jihlava after the Second World War was not as great as in other parts of the country, especially due to the vacant capacities after the massive deportation of Jihlava’s Germans. Therefore, the construction of the new Sídliště Ihousing estate only started in the second five-year plan, i.e. from 1954. The construction was bound by a political edict to build according to the given types and strictly set standards. The new housing estate was built on the area of a cancelled military training ground on the north-western outskirts of the town, following the new House of Health (Dům zdraví) and the District National Committee (Okresní národní výbor), now the headquarters of the Police of the Czech Republic. The initial planning documentation, signed by the responsible designer Zikan, was prepared by the Jihlava branch of Stavoprojekt, established in 1949. The signatures of the architects Jan Řídký and Jiří Schubert can be found under the designs of other buildings within the estate from 1956. The type documentation was supplied by the Construction Company (Pozemní stavby) Havlíčkův Brod. The Sídliště I housing estate was completed by 1960, providing a total of 717 new flats. The simple transparency of the structures and the modest decoration of the frontage in the vernacular character still express the socialist realism programme under which the estate was built. However, its appearance is identical to its simpler, less ornate version, which prevailed after 1954, when Soviet statesman Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev sharply criticised unnecessary waste in construction.

The first phase involved the construction of a set of typified apartment blocks around Vrchlického Street up to Zborovská Street. Gradually, work continued further to the north-west, where it was completed by a group of social amenities buildings on Evžena Rošického and Erbenova Streets. In the first part, the classical method of brickwork was still applied, while in the following stage, the ready-made manufactured "panel blocks" made of hollow bricks were used. The regular layout of the flats corresponds to the chosen T13 type with three, or a maximum of four above-ground floors. The flats had two or three rooms with a kitchen and a small bathroom. The semi-sunken basement housed cellars, boiler rooms, and nuclear bunkers. The arrangement of the buildings is characterised by a block building pattern with semi-closed inner blocks, a newly created street network, green belts, and pavements. The façade with windows and the characteristic scratched and coloured plaster, topped with a low hipped roof, was set on a stone base. In the first phase of the construction, the buildings still had window chambranles with an arched frieze or sgraffito drawing on folk ornaments, stone porticoes, and shallow avant-corps with a canopy over the entrance, and balconies with metal railings. However, many of the decorative elements and most of the scratched and coloured plaster have now disappeared under thermal insulation.

Since the interwar period, the theoretical concept of mass housing construction also included the requirement for basic public amenities, i.e. the provision of schools, shops, and health care. During the construction of the first housing estate in Jihlava, the House of Health (Dům zdraví) served as an outpatient centre. Between 1956 and 1958, a primary school designed by Jan Řídký was built on Evžena Rošického Street, providing 23 classrooms. It is again characterised by the typified block structure of a three-storey building, symmetrically divided by a strict grid of windows, a portico entrance, and an attic on the main cornice. This was soon followed by the addition of a separate adjacent building with a gymnasium, canteen, after school club and workshops, and a nursery on Erbenova Street in the same type of concept prevalent within the entire estate.

Given its austere and even drab architectural concept, the Sídliště I housing estate does not impress much. Nevertheless, it has become the most significant and most comprehensive example of the socialist realism style of the 1950s for Jihlava. The Jihlava estate corresponds to the early form of prefabrication of the construction industry, which was introduced nationwide at the time and was supposed to make the whole process cheaper and faster. Compared to the later prefabricated housing estates, the smaller "human" scale of the houses, good continuity with the surrounding urban block and high-rise buildings and a generous arrangement of greenery were still maintained there.

JL
Literature and other sources 

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