Prague's famous brutalist-style Intercontinental Hotel is undergoing a complete renovation. After the reconstruction, the hotel will operate with sustainability principles and will become part of the Fairmont chain, the daily E15.cz reports without mentioning the price of the planned reconstruction.
The brutalist building right by the Vltava River and on the corner of Pařížská Street, one of Prague's most expensive streets, will be upgraded with renewable energy and rainwater management. The hotel will be operated by the Fairmont chain after the renovation, according to E15.cz.
The renovation is now managed by architect Marek Tichý of TaK Architects, who has been involved in sustainability since the 1990s when he worked for the SEA studio or the Ecological Architecture Group. Architect Tichý is at the head of the unique renovation and conversion. He is turning the treasured Brutalist building and its surroundings into a space worthy of the twenty-first century, to be called the Staroměstská brána (Old Town Gate). The sustainable solutions that the team of architects have chosen to renovate the iconic hotel are bold. "We started from the fact that the hotel has its relatively wide area of interest interestingly situated by the Vltava River, and so we can largely abandon conventional sources and build a geothermal field of adequate capacity, in practice about thirty ground boreholes." The geothermal field is already located under the planned garden in front of the hotel and will largely supply the building with heat and cold.
The Intercontinental Hotel is currently owned by three Czech billionaires Oldřich Šlemr, Pavel Baudiš and Eduard Kučera.
