EXPO 58 restaurant pavilion

Official opening on 17 April 1958 (Brussels, Belgium)

The EXPO 58 restaurant and the main exhibition pavilion won the Gold Star, the highest prize at the international exhibition in Brussels. It was designed by František Cubr, Josef Hrubý and Zdeněk Pokorný. The architects drew from interwar functionalist architecture and the modernist tendencies in world architecture and designed the building as a kidney-shaped pavilion organically incorporated into the park. The building earned the prize because of new technologies, the possibility of disassembly and an exceptional interior. Its basis is a steel structure, but aluminium was used as well. Owing to large glass areas and a portico, the building seems light and airy. It also has a large terrace. There was a spiral staircase in the interior.

The restaurant pavilion is now the only thing that is left of the successful Czechoslovak exposition in Brussels. After its end, the Czechoslovak pavilion and the stand of Kaplan’s turbine were returned to Prague and displayed in Holešovice in Prague. In 1991, however, the pavilion was damaged by fire and eventually demolished. The restaurant building was built in the Letná Park, where it was used without major repairs until 1990. The deteriorating building was eventually auctioned off and reconstructed by a private owner (1997–2001). The modifications entirely changed the building’s interior, which now consists of offices.