In 1994, when the Czech President Václav Havel chose Litomyšl Chateau as the meeting place for seven Central European presidents, he probably never dreamed it would stir up such interest in the derelict brewery opposite. The intention to build a luxury hotel according to designs by Viktor Rudiš was rejected, and it was decided that the European alliance of the YMCA would use the brewery, and it eventually created a training centre with accommodation. The then mayor of Litomyšl, Miroslav Brýdl, entrusted the task of the reconstruction to Josef Pleskot, whose aborted 1993 design (01-71) for the Senquar department store in the town square appealed to him. The first phase of the reconstruction (2001-2006) concerned the area east of the passageway through the brewery and, during the second phase (2001-2014), dealt with the remaining area to the west.
The appearance of the brewery was affected throughout the various periods in history, and as regards heritage care, its reconstruction required a meticulous approach. The brewery was founded in the Renaissance period and used some of the Gothic chapter masonry during its construction. With the brewery, the Baroque architect František Maxmilián Kaňka created a building contrasting elegantly with the chateau and merging with its urban surroundings. Mansard roofs framed the brewery, it gained a new monumental facade facing out onto the area of the chateau forecourt, and a passageway was cut through the building and linked up to the main chateau gate along the same axis. During the 19th century, the original Renaissance-Baroque concept was marred with an array of outbuildings.
Whilst Mojmír Horyna, a respected expert on Baroque architecture, suggested during the 1980s that the original Renaissance-Baroque appearance be restored (even at the cost of removing later interventions), Josef Pleskot considered all preserved historical components to be of equal value. Pleskot agreed with the heritage consultant Petr Štoncner that, in form, all new elements applied in the interior would be evidence of the time of their creation. The modifications eventually carried out are not as distinctive as some of Pleskot's original ideas (e.g. a glass chimney symbolizing the building's original industrial function or the entrance door with an image of Christ by Jan Merta), but they effectively evoke the industrial atmosphere of the building.
The brewery offers two standards of accommodation – hostel and hotel. From a cultural heritage point of view, light conditions in the attic rooms of the hostel are innovatively resolved. The windows, in the shape of narrow slits, are hidden under the slightly raised roofing cover, and do not disrupt the silhouette of the roof as modern attic windows would. The windows are inconspicuous and are not even glazed as the roof trusses are covered with transparent polycarbonate sheets. Inside, the trusses have been left unconcealed, lending the hostel rooms a utilitarian character. This character is heightened by other elements such as the rustic wooden furniture or steel mesh bridges for accessing the upper rooms. The hotel accommodation is more expansive and offers bright maisonette rooms and rooms with views out over the chateau arcades. There is a reception area and training centre on the ground floor of the brewery. The courtyard, with its statue Čestmír by Olbram Zoubek, is an intersection of walkways into which Pleskot has inserted a subtle steel staircase reminiscent of utilitarian fittings in a factory. He accentuated the raw beauty of the unrendered walls with pointing, and retained traces of original structures.
The preserved historical layers merge with one another in a picturesque whole within the reconstructed brewery, whilst visible traces of age evoke a hazy sense of time passing in the visitor. While romantics admired the beauty of medieval remains in the 19th century, visitors in the 21st century experience similar feelings with the remains of industrial buildings. AP ateliér was successful in bestowing a new function upon the brewery, without however, erasing its “romantic” industrial appeal.
EK
