DANCING HOUSE
The Dancing House or Fred and Ginger is the nickname given to the Nationale-Nederlanden building in Prague, Czech Republic, at Rašínovo nábřeží (Rašín’s riverbank). It was designed by the Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić in co-operation with the renowned Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry on a vacant riverfront plot. The building was designed in 1992 and completed in 1996.
The very non-traditional design was controversial at the time because the house stands out among the Baroque, Gothic and Art Nouveau buildings for which Prague is famous and in the opinion of some it does not accord well with these architectural styles. The then Czech president, Václav Havel, who lived for decades next to the site, had avidly supported this project, hoping that the building would become a center of cultural activity.
Gehry originally named the house as Fred and Ginger (after the famous dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers – the house resembles a pair of dancers) but this nickname is now very rarely used; moreover, Gehry himself was later “afraid to import American Hollywood kitsch to Prague”, so refused his own idea.
structure
The glass tower has a concrete structure with a conical shape which is supported atop a series of inclined columns which rise from ground level, creating a portico and continuing to the end of the building. The tower is closed by a double curtain wall: an interior one of retracted glass and the second an exterior skin, also glass, supported on a steel frame which separates it from the main body of the building. The supports of the steel structure are fixed to the structure of the building. The vertical profiles are T-sections connected to each other by hollow profile sections.
The building which faces the river rises as a solid cylindrical concrete volume on the corner, where it joins with the steel and glass structure followed by a larger façade which faces the river and is constructed on a base of 99 prefabricated concrete panels and numerous windows.
Materials
The buildings, with a surface of 5842m², were constructed in steel, glass and prefabricated concrete panels, finished with plaster characteristic of the local architecture.
For the building parallel to the river, they used concrete panels in 99 different shapes and dimensions. At the inauguration, a sculpture, Medusa, was placed on top, made of metal tubes and covered with stainless steel wire mesh.
The architects, Gehry and Milunic, decided not to paint the exposed materials, but to display their natural colours: the glass is green, the concrete grey and the steel structure silver.
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