Jiří Jiroutek about PHENOMENON JESTED

Project Phenomenon Jested was founded around year 2000. For many years I have been looking towards the tower on the top of the hill over Liberec. It actually attracted me from the moment since I have ever seen it. I came to Liberec in 1985 and I fell in love with the city. I come from Louny and that is the place where my interest in architecture was born.

St. Nicholas church has always fascinated me with something. You do not have a distant view, you actually stand in the street under the church and you can twist your neck when you are trying to see the tops of the towers. I experienced something similar in Jested.
Tower which absolutely perfectly pictured the silhouette of the horizon has continually attracted me by something I cannot describe.
First photographical trials have depicted the building structure from the distance; the shape just seemed to me wonderful! Something like a nowadays church, attempt to reach the sky, the racket on its way to the eternal Universe. And then I saw Jested  from the close up, it was a new experience! The building structure seemed to me so unique, from the outside as well as from the inside.

At that time I have already worked in Naïve theatre, past Ypsilonka and my interest in theatre, photography, architecture, and paintings was getting stronger. I studied at the Institute of graphic photography, 60s and 70s were my inspiration. Through my friend I met with Otakar Binar. It was unreal to me when I talked about the period of the hotel and transmitter project beginnings at the top of Jested. It reminded me my students years a little, engagement for common thing, peoples communion which got excited by solving a common problem, it was not actually a problem, it was a challenge. What fascinated me the most about the whole thing was the effort that was put into making Jested and how many unique processes and technologies were actually used.  How it became possible to create a piece of art work which was unique in all aspects at the time of communistic era of planning economy and efforts for unification. Jested made me enthusiastic about its beauty and attractiveness.

When I got a chance to meet with Karel Hubáček, I understood. This person was like mercury. Although an elderly gentleman with greys, his eyes were dancing, you could feel his excitement from him, and his good spirit was almost infectious. This is how lovely period of pleasant meetings and dialogs started, mostly in the café Pošta. I listened to the narrating about SIAL and Školka, about fantastic group of people, about freedom which was unbelievable for that time and about foundation and actual building of the transmitter and the hotel.
When I saw the snapshots of original interiors for the first time, I did not understand how someone could replace something so ideally fitting into the building structure, which I have admired, by something, which is obviously sitting furnishing, however did not fit there at all. That was the moment when I said to myself that it is necessary to keep this unique building in the way how it was created, designed, built, and furnished. I collected information, contacts; I also searched for the original designs and plans, photographs……

I was surprised by the humility by which Karle Hubáček and Otakar Binar talked about all they have done. With all they had to put up with and with who and what they had to fight against. To create and draw a design is one thing but realization of original thoughts and untried technologies is another. Ideas and unique solutions made the building realization harder than it initially seemed and political situation did not contribute to it either. In-spite all that, the team lead by Karel Hubáček completed the building in 1973 and handed it over for the usage. And as a matter of fact Hubáček was not even invited to the official opening of Jested. He was officially invited to celebrate only 25th anniversary.

Project Phenomenon Jested was founded in order to give praise and thanks to the creators of Jested so that wide public could find out about the uniqueness of the building and so that under public pressure a reconstruction and putting interiors into their original state could have been started.

Very first creation was a 2005 calendar, it was ordered for municipal authorities of Liberec city – I prefer black-and-white photography, and that is why I have photographed the building of transmitter in black-and-white, that is my seeing of the beauty of Jested – in the first half of 2005 the calendar received the 1st place in the award of press promoting travel tourism. 
Afterward I published a photography book PHENOMENON JESTED on my own expenses, which is devoted to the hotel property and the transmitter in Jested, to the team of architect Karel Hubáček and it uses various views: from the competition and documentation of building works, comparing of designs and realization of interior design with contemporary state, depicting development design of artist, through technical specialties and common view on Jested through tourist’s eyes, or photographers.
In the same year exhibition titled PHENOMENON JESTED has followed in the Gallery of Jaroslav Fragner in Prague, where black-and-white photos of Jested in the size of 1 X 1 meter have been exhibited. Next to the photos were also exhibited original drawings and plans, exhibits of original furnishing – little armchairs and small table from the café, table and chair from the restaurant, dining set, armchair from the saloon etc., which was assembled together during the times of preparation of book Phenomenon Jested. The exhibition was not only a typical exhibition about architecture. I tried to show the atmosphere of the times of first visitors of “the original” Jested. My intention was also to attract as much as possible visitors to this building structure as well as to gain new admirers also from government officials and politicians who are able to influence the future of this unique building structure.
The fact that the interest in Jested in the world is huge, has demonstrated the visit of curators from Victoria & Albert Museum in London who have visited Jested together with British journalists of prestigious newspapers and wished to transfer the exhibition to London. There it was, in 2008, in its reduced form a part of a huge exhibition about architecture and art of central Europe during the cold war “Cold War Modern”. Due to this fact, also London visitors could have seen at least a small part of the original Jested. Exhibition was afterwards, except the Czech Republic, presented in Brussels and St. Gallen.




I believe that all these activities were and will be the next step for saving Jested, that they will help its return to the original state and may be also an entry into the list of UNESCO heritage sights. The fact that the building structure was registered as a national cultural heritage is hopefully a promise that it will not be met with the fate of some of other cultural sights of the Czech lands which suffer from the lack of finances for reconstruction.