Victoria Palace is the first new building in nearly 90 years to complete Vítězné náměstí in Prague's Dejvice district, filling its north-eastern section between Jugoslávských partyzánů and Verdunská streets.
According to the original master plan by architect Antonín Engel, Vítězné náměstí has a distinctive form: its south-eastern half is a rectangle with a 1:2 aspect ratio, while its north-western half takes the shape of a precise semicircle. This is a reference to classical Greece and one of its most famous geometric construction problems – the squaring of the circle. In the broader urban context, the square is intersected by the axes of individual streets, with the principal axis of symmetry running along the line of Dejvická – Technická streets.
The guiding principle of our architectural concept for the new building was an abstracted version of the external form of the General Staff building – consisting of a curved mass surmounted by a hipped roof – thus providing a symmetrical complement to the square. However, whereas the General Staff building by its very nature conveys the impression of a massive military palace, the new building set out to achieve the opposite effect – lightness and openness. These design qualities respond to the different functional programme: a residential building with a commercial ground floor. A further connecting element between the two facing buildings is the prevailing verticality of the main volume, which is horizontally divided in a similar manner into a ground floor, a principal body and a set-back roof.
