authors: Boris Redčenkov, Prokop Tomášek, Jaroslav Wertig
cooperation: ing.arch. Michal Nohejl
investor: NEPTUN YACHT CENTRUM PRAHA s.r.o.

Boat dealership and yacht club

Virtually everybody knows this place. Without remembering it, without realizing it, everybody knows - registers it by their peripheral sight when passing through the embankment. They associate it with the petrol station or the automobile club. Few suspect though that this is a significant border point where two different spaces and times meet. From driver’s point of view, it is a flash in a fast video sequence full of advertisements, billboards, signs, and labels. However, outside driver’s field of vision, there is the rule of the river magic – the wide space

with the stately rolling river. The construction site is the frontier between these two speeds. Which of these phenomena should be emphasized? The river is the outright winner. The fragile tower does not intend to attract the interest through the catchiness of billboards. Yet it intends the break the fragile crust of the motor road as the ambassador of the river poetics which drivers do not apprehend as they in fact cannot see it from their vehicles and perceive it secondarily from hints. The formal likeness to the refereeing tower for rowing competitions is one

such hint. The sun reflections caressing the body of the tower are the live visualisation of the river in the image of the thoroughfare. Together with the bridge the tower is the boundary marker for the discreet turning to the weekend world of the Císařský ostrov (Emperor’s Island).
Just a few meters after turning from the fast lane the unthought-of world appears with its poetry that must appeal to everyone and not just artists such as Lhoták or Vančura. Architecture, materials, and paints stress the temporal character of the structure.