On a recent visit to Europe, I had the opportunity to visit several new projects in Prague, Czech Republic, with Dalibor Fikr, a senior project manager with PENTA Real Estate, one of the city’s most active developers. One impressed me as virtually unique, at least in my experience: the successful conversion of a historic industrial building into housing, retail, and restaurants as part of a large urban design scheme.

Beer is virtually an obsession in central Europe, but particularly among Czechs, who consider theirs the best in the world. Czechs consumed 126 liters per capita in 2024, and there were more than 400 breweries in the country. Even so, the number of active breweries has fallen over the past century, leaving large facilities vacant in some towns and cities. A few are environmental brownfields, requiring extensive mitigation of toxic substances. Others are in historic districts that are subject to stringent conservation standards.

The Nuselsky Pivovar (Nusle Brewery) was one such large industrial complex along the Botic River near Batri Synku Square in Prague 4. Active since 1694, it became one of the largest breweries in Europe during the 19th century, employing thousands of residents. As a large, complex group of buildings of different ages and physical condition, it presented a number of challenges for the development team. One was its location across the river from a major street and park, for which the designers created a ground level bridge that makes the crossing invisible. Architects CMC Architects (David Richard Chisolm and Vit Maslo), a Czech-American partnership, created loft apartments under the timber-framed roofs of the existing buildings, while also converting larger spaces for retail, civic, and cultural uses. Children in a nearby school participated in the design of a playground in one of the main courtyards. Because of both environmental and heritage conservation restrictions, the project waited years for municipal approvals, but the developers persisted with their vision. It opened earlier this year, and nearly all of its 125 loft units have sold. The complex also contains several new buildings that offer 379 apartments for sale. These were designed by Chybik + Krisof, a Czech firm. 

Photographs show why the complex of new and old buildings has become a magnet for young families with children. The pedestrian bridge frames a gateway under the historic entrance to the brewery; from there, one passes through a vaulted corridor that leads to a large public space fronting new apartment buildings in several different modern idioms, each in a different material. There are restaurants and stores in each building, drawing attention immediately. After spending an hour watching people traverse the main square created by the design team, I marveled at the chance interactions between residents and newcomers. In current parlance among social psychologists, the many “affordances” for activity and human contact make the area a natural meeting ground, a “common” in the English sense. These include a fountain, shade trees, doorways to public spaces, and eateries with outdoor tables.

Nothing was more compelling than the sight of a young boy cautiously eyeing the jets of water in the fountain, approaching, then drawing back. His mother spoke with friends nearby, leaving her son to his exploration. He eventually ventured into the spray, delighted with his sensory discoveries.

Perhaps I was intrigued by these scenes because I had just spent a week in the Italian town of Viterbo, where such sights are common in one of the country’s most beautiful medieval towns. I spoke at a conference, sponsored by the city’s municipal government and a private group, entitled Beauty and the Built Landscape, which drew professionals from 22 countries. Inspired by the pioneering work of Colin Rowe, Kevin Lynch, Michael Dennis, and Stanton Eckstut, the group discussed the “state of the art” in urban design in locations from China’s Yunnan Province to the fire-ravaged heart of Pasadena, California. 

I began the conference with a talk entitled “The Five Pillars of Beauty in Architecture and Landscape,” focusing on the multisensory experience of humans in complex, richly articulated environments—there were many of these in Viterbo. One was its Piazza del Gesu, which focuses on a medieval church façade. Another was the multilevel space in the Piazza Papale, which connects a medieval papal palace with the duomo, or cathedral. Though neither resembles the spaces in the Prague brewery ensemble, the hallmarks of beautiful urban “landscapes” (in Italian, “paesaggio”) are rife in all these urban environments.

I have included photos of these unique places in this piece in order to give some sense of why, in the U.S., instead of our largely vacant, alienating urban spaces, we need beautiful and coherent ones like these European examples. Humans thrive in such places, but become sick and stressed in the majority of urban public spaces in modern cities. It may be useful to recall that the Chinese have created 40 cities that look and feel like Houston during the past 30 years, and that many emerging economies, such as those in India, Indonesia, and Brazil, are doing much the same in their new developments. Of course, all of these countries have historic cities with many good buildings intact.

In order to respond to climate change, the planet must have intelligent, creative designs for the adaptive reuse of historic buildings in all cities, not just the gems of the Mediterranean and Northern Europe. Gustavo Giovannoni, the great Italian architect and urbanist of the early twentieth century, coined the term “diradamento” to describe the pruning and grafting together of historic fabric with new buildings in our oldest, most precious historic towns and cities. Prague is one of the most beautiful of these places, but it is little different from Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, or Cincinnati when it comes to industrial infrastructure and large, often vacant, groups of buildings. Indeed, any prosperous late-19th and early 20th century neighborhood or industrial quarter will have such buildings, no matter what the location on any continent.

I commend interested readers to the PENTA website, which describes not only this project but others in Prague and Bratislava. Most historic cities in Europe have strict, daunting requirements for making new buildings fit seamlessly into old neighborhoods, something not found readily in the U.S. If architects and planners in the Czech Republic are capable of meeting these standards and producing fine urban designs for people from mixed-income groups, their American counterparts should take up the challenge of equaling or surpassing their achievements, just like we do in the Olympics. And for god’s sake, drink real pilsner beer, not Bud Light, while you do so. 

Featured image: This view toward the main hall (Pasaz) doors shows the space created by maintaining the variety of massing and roof shapes in the original buildings. The red tile roofs now have skylights that light the apartments below. The vent stacks have been retained though they now do not function.