Let's dance.

Although Prague is famous for it’s classical Barok and Jugendstil architecture, and there are some breathtaking buildings to be found here, one of my favourite buildings in town is a modern one (or even a ‘post modern’ one, oh that dreadful P-word!). It’s the Dancing Building (Tančicí dům), often referred to as 'Fred and Ginger'. It was designed as a collaboration between two architects: the Czech Vlado Miluniç and the American Frank Gehry (one of my favourite architects of all time, who designed the beautiful Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain).

Fred and Ginger have been dancing on the bank of the Vltava river since 1996. As you can see, there is a dent in the glass façade on the left side; apparently, this was done so that one of the neighbours would not lose his view on the Prague Castle, which is on the other side of the river. I don’t know if this is true, but it sounds pretty good, and ever since I saw Gehry design his buildings (in the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry), which basically comes down to folding strips of silver coloured paper and attaching them with paperclips, it wouldn’t surprise me if this is indeed true.

(A thorough and slightly pretentious essay on Tančicí dům , written by an art historian who did know what he was talking about, appeared in the German art mag Kunst & Kultur in 1997 and can be read here.)