Dancing House | Vlado Milunic + Frank Ghery

Alright, so this isn’t a ‘Look out! new building by Frank Gehry!’ article. The Dancing House or the Dancing Building or Ginger & Fred, were designed in 1992 and completed in 1996, so the house isn’t new by most metrics. But it’s surprising (and also not surprising) that the ideas and concepts present in the building continue to be not only relevant, but overlooked in some contemporary structures.Known to the designers Vlado Milunic and Frank Ghery as ‘New-Baroque’ the house is located on a plot which had been empty ever since a bomb destroyed the existent house in WWII. Interestingly, this plot is the one next to where Vaclav Havel, who died late last year and was a prominent poet, playwright, essayist, dissident and president for both Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic- grew up. He supported its conception in hopes that it would become a new cultural center.

photography by Matteo Piotto – Erturk & Ben Moodhouse

The scheme consists of two central bodies, each unique and possessing of its own identity. One, a glass tower supported by curved columns rises in front of and seemingly half in- half out of the other volume. The other entity is a warm, cream coloured, form which is quite indescribable.One at first desires to call it more regular but this is only when compared to the glass tower’s sensual stance, and also there’s that cylindrical bulge adjacent the tower. It is a volume of windows, whereas the tower is a window. The windows extend from the facade as outgoing picture frames, in wavy lines running across. There is relation to the surroundin Baroque, Gothic and Art Nouveau buildings for which Prague is famous, but it is tweaked, it is made/looked into anew.