Ještěd Tower
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Ještěd Tower () is a television transmitter on top of Mount
Ještěd Ještěd (; ) is the highest mountain of the Ještěd–Kozákov Ridge in the north of the Czech Republic, at . It is the symbol of the city of Liberec. On the summit is the Ještěd Tower restaurant, hotel and television tower, designed by Kare ...
near
Liberec Liberec (; ) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 108,000 inhabitants, making it the fifth largest city in the country. It lies on the Lusatian Neisse River, in a basin surrounded by mountains. The city centre is well preserved and is pr ...
in the
Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...
. Measuring , it is made of
reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...
shaped in a "
hyperboloid In geometry, a hyperboloid of revolution, sometimes called a circular hyperboloid, is the surface generated by rotating a hyperbola around one of its principal axes. A hyperboloid is the surface obtained from a hyperboloid of revolution by def ...
" form. The tower was designed by architect Karel Hubáček, who was assisted by Zdeněk Patrman, involved in building
statics Statics is the branch of classical mechanics that is concerned with the analysis of force and torque acting on a physical system that does not experience an acceleration, but rather is in mechanical equilibrium, equilibrium with its environment ...
, and by Otakar Binar, who designed the interior furnishing. It took the team three years to finalize the structure design (1963–1966). The construction itself took seven years to finish (1966–1973). The hyperboloid shape was chosen since it naturally extends the silhouette of the hill and, moreover, resists the extreme climate conditions on the summit of Mount Ještěd. The design combines the operation of a mountaintop hotel and a television transmitter. The hotel and restaurant are located in the lowest sections of the tower. Before construction of the hotel, two huts stood near the mountain summit: one was built in the middle of the 19th century, and the other was added in the early 20th century. Both buildings had a wooden structure, and both burned to the ground in the 1960s. The tower is one of the dominant features of the
North Bohemia North Bohemia (, ) is a region in the north of the Czech Republic. Location North Bohemia roughly covers the present-day NUTS regional unit of ''CZ04 Severozápad'' and the western part of ''CZ05 Severovýchod''. From an administrative perspec ...
n landscape. The gallery on the ground floor and the restaurant on the first offers views as far as Poland and Germany. The tower has been on the list of Czech cultural monuments since 1998, becoming a national cultural monument in 2006. In 2007, it was entered on the Tentative List of UNESCO World Heritage sites. In 1969, Karel Hubáček was awarded the Perret Prize of the International Union of Architects (UIA).


Access

The monument is accessible by road and by the Ještěd cable car from the foot of the mountain. However since a crash in 2021, the system has been closed indefinitely.


Construction

After the existing Ještěd lodge burned down in January 1963, a decision was made by Restaurace Liberec (the company that used to manage the burned-down lodges) and the Prague Radio Communications Administration to build a new complex on the summit of Mount Ještěd, which would accommodate a mountain hotel including a restaurant and at the same time would serve as a TV signal transmitter. An architectural competition for the building design was announced. It took place in February 1963 on the Liberec Stavoprojekt premises. Eleven architects/teams took part in the competition, including individual architects Otakar Binar, Jiří Svoboda, Pavel Švancer, Ota Nykodým, Karel Hubáček, Jaromír Syrovátko, Miroslav Ulmann, Jaromír Vacek and teams Josef Patrný, Jiří Hubka, V. Netolička, Miloš Technik, and Svatopluk Technik. Hubáček's design was the only one complying with both the requirements. All the designs were put on public display in the Liberec branch of Československá spořitelna. The jury (aka the council of Liberec district national committee) on its 22 April 1963 meeting chose Hubáček's proposal as the winner. The building design created some technical problems for Hubáček and his team due to the climate conditions at the summit of Mount Ještěd. Experts from the
Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences The Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (Czech: ''Československá akademie věd'', Slovak: ''Česko-slovenská akadémia vied'') was established in 1953 to be the scientific center for Czechoslovakia. It was succeeded by the Czech Academy of Science ...
, the
Czech Technical University in Prague Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) () is one of the largest universities in the Czech Republic with 8 faculties, and is one of the oldest institutes of technology in Central Europe. It is also the oldest non-military technical universi ...
and the Liberec Institute of Textile and Mechanical Engineering helped to overcome the technical difficulties. The technological equipment and procedures that were put together were protected by the Czechoslovak
patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...
s. Some elements (such as the laminated cladding, the special
pendulum A pendulum is a device made of a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate i ...
or the transverse
tuned mass damper A tuned mass damper (TMD), also known as a harmonic absorber or seismic damper, is a device mounted in structures to reduce mechanical vibrations, consisting of a mass mounted on one or more damped springs. Its oscillation frequency is tune ...
) introduced by Zdeněk Patrman in collaboration with the academy experts have since been included in other structures (e.g. the Cukrák transmitter tower). The ceremonial laying of the foundation stone took place on 30 July 1966. The general contractor was Pozemní stavby from Liberec. On 1 May 1971 the transmitter began its operation. However, the hotel interiors and the restaurant were completed two years later. On 9 July 1973, the Ještěd Tower grand opening took place. The total construction was 64 million
Czechoslovak koruna The Czechoslovak koruna (in Czech and Slovak: ''koruna československá'', at times ''koruna česko-slovenská''; ''koruna'' means ''crown'') was the currency of Czechoslovakia from 10 April 1919 to 14 March 1939, and from 1 November 1945 to 7 ...
(in 1973).


Description


Structure

The tower foundation consists of a circular reinforced concrete slab with a thickness of 1 metre and a diameter of 13.40 metres. The foundation is laid in the altitude of 1004.75 metres. The load-bearing element of the structure consists of two concentric reinforced concrete cylinders with inner
diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the centre of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest Chord (geometry), chord of the circle. Both definitions a ...
s of 4.4 and 12.5 metres (and wall thickness of 30 centimetres each); the narrower is 42.4 metres high, the wider (external) is 22.5 metres high. Individual floors are suspended on these columns on steel structures, starting with the second floor. The columns were constructed by Průmstav Pardubice. The supporting steel structures for the floors and for the tower structure were manufactured in the Mostárna plant in the then state-owned company Vítkovice Iron Works of Klement Gottwald. A
steel Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that demonstrates improved mechanical properties compared to the pure form of iron. Due to steel's high Young's modulus, elastic modulus, Yield (engineering), yield strength, Fracture, fracture strength a ...
shell with a length of 44 metres of a variable diameter (from 10.50 m to 1.62 m) is attached to the inner column. The laminate support cylinder (diameter of 1.90 m and a wall thickness of 16 to 12 mm) attached to it originally had a length of 17.52 m which was extended another 3 metres during the 1997 reconstruction.


Floors

In the basement of the building, there are engine rooms and warehouses. The first floor is shared by the administrative offices and the television transmission hall that is connected to the antenna systems on the ninth floor by means of an elevator and an emergency staircase built inside the central tube. The rest of the first floor is occupied by the restaurant kitchen. On the second floor there is an observation terrace, a buffet and the main entrance hall with the reception desk. The hall is dominated by a suspended staircase leading to an observation restaurant on the third floor. On the fourth and fifth floor there are hotel rooms. On the fourth floor there are 12 double rooms and one apartment. Rooms on the fifth floor were originally used as flats for the hotel and transmitter employees but were later converted to hotel apartments. The sixth and seventh floors house the transmitting technology. There is a specially developed laminated cladding in the shape of a revolving hyperboloid shielding against extreme weather conditions. On the eighth and ninth floors the architect placed drinking water tanks and a backup battery
power supply A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, electric current, current, and frequency to power ...
. There is an
elevator An elevator (American English) or lift (Commonwealth English) is a machine that vertically transports people or freight between levels. They are typically powered by electric motors that drive traction cables and counterweight systems suc ...
engine room on the tenth floor. Above it a special
pendulum A pendulum is a device made of a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced sideways from its resting, equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate i ...
is installed, movement of which absorb cross vibrations caused by the wind.


Exterior

At the third to the fifth floor levels (i.e. the restaurant and hotel floors) the outer shell takes on the shape of a
conical In geometry, a cone is a three-dimensional figure that tapers smoothly from a flat base (typically a circle) to a point not contained in the base, called the ''apex'' or '' vertex''. A cone is formed by a set of line segments, half-lines, ...
rotating surface. It consists of 64 conically placed panels. The panel surface is made of anodized
aluminium Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...
sheets. At the restaurant level, these panels are glazed over the entire width and complemented by a low
window sill A windowsill (also written window sill or window-sill, and less frequently in British English, cill) is the horizontal structure or surface at the bottom of a window. Window sills serve to structurally support and hold the window in place. The ...
, while at the hotel level there are smaller windows with rounded corners.
Parabolic antenna A parabolic antenna is an antenna that uses a parabolic reflector, a curved surface with the cross-sectional shape of a parabola, to direct the radio waves. The most common form is shaped like a dish and is popularly called a dish antenna or p ...
s of microwave transmitters are located on the seventh and eighth floors. The building cover is made of trapezoid-shaped laminated panels, which are not joined by any
metal A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...
elements, as these would prevent the passage of
electromagnetic waves In physics, electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is a self-propagating wave of the electromagnetic field that carries momentum and radiant energy through space. It encompasses a broad spectrum, classified by frequency or its inverse, wavelength, ran ...
. The upper side of the elevator machine room on the tenth floor is fitted with a welded steel tube, which forms a 48 meter high antenna mast. Its surface is covered with metallized
aluminum Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...
and a
spiral In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a point, moving further away as it revolves around the point. It is a subtype of whorled patterns, a broad group that also includes concentric objects. Two-dimensional A two-dimension ...
staircase leads up inside the tube. At the top of the mast there is a self-supporting laminate extension of 18 meters attached. During the 1997 transmitter
reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...
it was extended by another 3 meters. The extension is there to protect the TV broadcast antennas against the elements. On top of the extension there is a steel lid, on which an annular pendulum weighing 800 kg is suspended by means of dampers.


Interior design

The
interior design Interior design is the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space. With a keen eye for detail and a Creativity, creative flair, an ...
including its
furniture Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., Stool (seat), stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (table (furniture), tables), storing items, working, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Furnitur ...
comes from Otakar Binar.
Cookware Cookware and bakeware is food preparation equipment, such as cooking pots, pans, baking sheets etc. used in kitchens. Cookware is used on a stove or range cooktop, while bakeware is used in an oven. Some utensils are considered both cookwar ...
and some
textile Textile is an Hyponymy and hypernymy, umbrella term that includes various Fiber, fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, Staple (textiles)#Filament fiber, filaments, Thread (yarn), threads, and different types of #Fabric, fabric. ...
accessories were based on Karl Wünsch designs. Glass makers Stanislav Libenský and his partner Jaroslava Brychtová also participated in the interior furnishing. They originally planned inserting a tall glass pendulum in the publicly accessible space. The pendulum would consist of two
lens A lens is a transmissive optical device that focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements'') ...
es representing the eternal movement. Instead, they decided to drill eight glass emblems into the concrete transmitter shaft. According to the artists, the shaft and its modification suggested the tower was growing up from the rock. On the other hand, for Karel Hubáček the glass emblems embodied fallen meteorites. The author of the trellis located in the hotel corridor is Jaroslav Klápště. The staircase walls and the hotel corridors are lined with ceramic tiles designed by Děvana Mírová. The entrance doors and the hotel reception walls are covered with wrought sheets by Miloš Koška, the
tapestry Tapestry is a form of Textile arts, textile art which was traditionally Weaving, woven by hand on a loom. Normally it is used to create images rather than patterns. Tapestry is relatively fragile, and difficult to make, so most historical piece ...
hanging on the lounge wall was created by Vladimír Křečan.


Transmitter

On 1 May 1971, the transmitter (equipped with Tesla III-Zona) began broadcasting television signal from the new tower. In September 1973, broadcasting of the second
Czechoslovak Television Czech Television ( ; abbreviation: ČT) is a public television broadcaster in the Czech Republic, broadcasting six channels. Established after breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1992, it is the successor to Czechoslovak Television founded in 1953. H ...
program was added. After the
Velvet Revolution The Velvet Revolution () or Gentle Revolution () was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations against the one-party government of the Communist Pa ...
, the transmitter (using a Tesla equipment) was spreading signals of
Czech Television Czech Television ( ; abbreviation: ČT) is a public television broadcaster in the Czech Republic, broadcasting six channels. Established after breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1992, it is the successor to Czechoslovak Television founded in 1953. H ...
(
ČT1 ČT1 (ČT Jedna, Česká televize 1, "''Jednička''") is a Czech public television channel operated by Czech Television. ČT1 is a general-purpose channel, broadcasting family-oriented television, Czech films, news, and documentaries. History ...
and
ČT2 ČT2 (ČT Dva, Česká televize 2, "''Dvojka''") is the Czech Republic, Czech Public broadcasting, public television channel, operated by Czech Television. ČT2 broadcasts documentaries nature-oriented shows, frequently showing foreign films in t ...
), Nova and Prima and
Czech Radio Czech Radio (, ČRo) is the public radio broadcaster of the Czech Republic operating continuously since 1923. It is the oldest national radio broadcaster in continental Europe and the second-oldest in Europe after the BBC. Czech Radio was esta ...
(Radiožurnál, Praha (today Dvojka) and Vltava) and of private operators ( Radio Proglas, Radio Contact Liberec and Europe 2). In connection with the broadcasting digitization in the Czech Republic, in June 2009, the antenna systems in the laminate extension were updated. In addition to radio and television broadcasting, Jested is also an important node for
radio relay Radio stations that cannot communicate directly due to distance, terrain or other difficulties sometimes use an intermediate radio relay station to relay the signals. A radio relay receives weak signals and retransmits them, often in a different di ...
and optical links. Mobile operators
T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand of telecommunications by Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (, ; often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a partially state-owned German telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn and the largest telec ...
, O2,
Vodafone Vodafone Group Public Limited Company () is a British Multinational company, multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates Service (economic ...
and Nordic Telecom have base stations (BTS) here.


Awards and accolades

In 1964, the Association of Architects of the
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, (Czech language, Czech and Slovak language, Slovak: ''Československá socialistická republika'', ČSSR) known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic (''Československá republika)'', Fourth Czecho ...
awarded the Ještěd Tower design on its annual Architectural Works 1962–63 exhibit. In spring of 1969, at a time when the building had not yet been completed, Karel Hubáček was awarded the Auguste Perret Prize for the creative use of technology in architecture by the International Union of Architects. It is the most significant award ever achieved by a Czech architect. In 2000, the building was awarded the title “The Most Important Czech Building of the 20th Century” In September 2005, in the iDNES.cz "Seven Wonders of the Czech Republic" readers survey the tower ranked as second being defeated by the Dlouhé stráně Hydro Power Plant. On 26 March 1998, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic registered the building as an immovable cultural monument. In January 2006, the building was declared a national cultural monument. On 29 May 2007, it was added to the Indicative List of Cultural Property of the Czech Republic, of which buildings are nominated for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List.


Impact

The tower is the main symbol of the city of
Liberec Liberec (; ) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 108,000 inhabitants, making it the fifth largest city in the country. It lies on the Lusatian Neisse River, in a basin surrounded by mountains. The city centre is well preserved and is pr ...
. Its silhouette appears on the region's flag and the coat-of-arms, on the local university's logo and on the logo of the local first-league football club
FC Slovan Liberec FC Slovan Liberec (), commonly referred to as Slovan Liberec or simply Slovan, is a Czech professional association football, football club based in the city of Liberec. The club is one of the most successful in the Czech Republic, having won thr ...
. The building is featured in the Czech movie
Grandhotel ''Grandhotel '' is a Czech language, Czech comedy film directed by David Ondříček. It was released in 2006. Plot summary Cast * Marek Taclík - Fleischman * Klára Issová - Ilja * Jaroslav Plesl - Patka * Jaromír Dulava - Jégr * Ladisla ...
based on the eponymous book by Jaroslav Rudiš.


See also

*
List of towers The tallest structure in the world is the Burj Khalifa skyscraper at . Listed are guyed masts (such as telecommunication masts), self-supporting towers (such as the CN Tower), skyscrapers (such as the Willis Tower), oil platforms, electricity ...
* Hyperboloid structure *
List of hyperboloid structures This page is a list of hyperboloid structures. These were first applied in architecture by Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov (1853–1939). Shukhov built his first example as a water tower (hyperboloid, hyperbolic Thin-shell structure, shell) f ...


References


Further reading

* Heinle, Erwin; "Türme aller Zeiten – aller Kulturen", Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart (Germany), , 1997.


External links

*
Hotel on Jested

History and architecture of the Ještěd Tower
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jested Tower Broadcast transmitters Hotels in the Czech Republic Hyperboloid structures Interior design National cultural monuments of the Czech Republic Tourist attractions in the Czech Republic Communication towers in the Czech Republic 1973 establishments in Czechoslovakia