atelier gram Hangs a Glazed Public Stair on Přerov's 1969 Town Hall and Turns It Toward the Square

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This article covers topics related to Public Building, Architecture, Civic Architecture, Architecture Project, Architectural Promenade, Building Design. In Přerov, Czechia, a tight-budget retrofit keeps a 1969 modernist frame and adds a diagonal stair linking the square to a rooftop café.

In Přerov, Czechia, a tight-budget retrofit keeps a 1969 modernist frame and adds a diagonal stair linking the square to a rooftop café.

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UNI Editorial published Blog under Public Building, Architecture on Oct 10, 2026

Přerov's town hall was built in 1969 as an instrument of administration: a gridded office block on náměstí T. G. Masaryka that served its departments and largely ignored the square in front of it. atelier gram, led by Anne-Sereine Tremblay and Jan Kudlička, won the 2021 competition to reconstruct it. Construction ran from 2024 to 2026 on roughly 5,000 m² and a budget of about 350 million CZK. The brief could have produced a generic retrofit: new windows, new insulation, a fresh coat of paint. It produced something sharper.

The interesting move is not the mesh skin or the glazing, although both matter. It is the decision to take circulation, normally the most hidden part of a bureaucracy, and put it on the façade. A new glazed staircase climbs diagonally across the south elevation from the reception desk to a rooftop café and the registry office. Officials and citizens now move through the building in full view of the square. We think that is a more honest statement about public institutions than most new civic buildings manage, and it was achieved by keeping almost everything that was already there.

A Building That Finally Faces Its Square

Translucent mesh-clad facade with a diagonal exterior stair above a paved square with benches, parked cars and pedestrians under overcast sky

Glazed multi-storey facade with an open ground-floor arcade facing a town square with benches and parked cars under heavy grey clouds

Five-storey office block with a blue-grey gridded window facade facing a snow-covered square under an overcast winter sky

The architects kept the original structural grid, the overall volume, the façade rhythm and the arcade. Where the old concrete elements needed repair, they were re-rendered in břízolit, the pebble-dash finish the building already wore. The result reads as continuous with 1969 rather than as a correction of it. The snowy view of the gridded block shows how much of the building's identity lives in that repetitive bay, and the project wisely leaves it legible.

What changes is the relationship to the ground. A fully glazed ground floor pulls T. G. Masaryka Square into the lobby, and the translucent mesh layered over the upper floors softens the block without hiding it. From the benches you can read the floors, the stair and the people on it. That is a different civic posture from the closed modernist slab, achieved with a light hand.

The Diagonal Stair as Civic Route

Street view between older plastered buildings toward the glazed, mesh-wrapped block with its diagonal stair, a pedestrian in red passing below

Wide concrete staircase with a grey steel balustrade rising beside a tall glazed wall in soft daylight

Concrete stairwell with dark steel balustrades and white globe pendants, a glazed meeting room visible above and the number 4 on the wall

Seen from the narrow street between older plastered buildings, the stair is the building's signature: a slash across the glass that tells you this is a route, not just a fire escape. Inside, it is wide, concrete and generous, with dark steel balustrades and white globe pendants that mark each landing. The large painted floor number on the wall is a small, useful gesture in a building that many visitors enter only once a year.

The stair volume does more than move people. It holds exhibition areas for the public and informal meeting spots for staff from different departments, so the circulation zone works as a shared room. This is where the project earns its civic claim. A town hall where departments bump into each other, and residents can see them doing it, behaves differently from one organised around closed doors and lift lobbies.

Arcade, Columns and the Ground Floor

Concrete arched passage beneath a mesh-clad glass upper volume, with a stair beyond and a street lamp in clear morning light

Tapered concrete columns and entrance steps below corrugated and perforated metal cladding, with a pedestrian walking in the square on an overcast day

The original arcade survives, and its tapered concrete columns now carry a lighter, more transparent upper body. The arched passage under the mesh-wrapped glass volume shows the strategy clearly: heavy, retained concrete at the base, a new layered skin above. The contrast between rough concrete and perforated or corrugated metal is blunt, and we prefer that bluntness to any attempt to blend the two.

The entrance steps and the columns give the square a covered edge again, a threshold where you can wait out the weather before stepping inside. It is a modest piece of urbanism, but it is the one that makes the glazed ground floor feel like an extension of the public realm rather than a shop window.

The Back of House Stays Honest

Rear view of the white glazed block with a zigzag steel fire stair, a yellow truck and low older buildings under grey cloud

Blank corrugated metal tower block raised on concrete legs, topped with antennas, seen down a cobbled street at dusk

Not every elevation got the showpiece treatment. The rear carries a zigzag steel fire stair over a working yard, and the corrugated metal tower raised on concrete legs, topped with antennas, reads as pure infrastructure at the end of a cobbled street. The architects have not tried to dress these up into something they are not.

Given the budget, that restraint is a design decision as much as a necessity. Money went to the stair, the ground floor and the roof, where the public actually experiences the building. The service sides simply do their jobs, and the building is more convincing for it.

Offices Built Around a Stable Core

Meeting room with a long white table facing a floor-to-ceiling window, mesh screen and a domed historic building beyond

Conference room with an oval table, pale green chairs and three ring-shaped pendant lights beside tall windows with grey curtains in cloudy light

View from a desk through a glass partition to a concrete stair, with white globe pendant lamps and a green velvet curtain

The floor plates are organised around a fixed central core, leaving the perimeter open for flexible, inexpensive office and meeting layouts. Meeting rooms sit against the full-height glazing, with the mesh screen filtering views toward the domed historic building across town. The oval conference table, pale green chairs and ring pendants show a palette that is warm without being decorative.

The view from a desk through a glass partition to the concrete stair sums up the interior logic. Work and movement are separated acoustically but not visually. A green velvet curtain offers privacy when it is needed, which is a more humane answer than frosted film on every pane.

Kitchens, Corridors and the Life of Staff

Narrow upper-floor corridor with yellow timber wall, teal kitchen cabinets, grey tile and round stools beside a long window wall in daylight

Pantry counter wrapped in white folded fins, with green cabinet doors, dark blue tile backsplash and a black exposed ceiling above

Top-floor corridor with blue velvet armchairs, exposed black ceiling pipes and a glazed partition wall at dusk

The staff spaces are where colour enters. A narrow upper corridor pairs a yellow timber wall with teal kitchen cabinets and round stools along the window wall. A pantry counter is wrapped in white folded fins, with green doors and a dark blue tile backsplash under an exposed black ceiling. These are cheap moves, paint, tile and joinery, used with confidence.

The exposed ceilings, with their pipes and services left visible, are a frank admission that the original structure is still doing the work. Blue velvet armchairs on the top-floor corridor turn a passage into a lounge. Together these rooms suggest the architects took the daily experience of civil servants as seriously as the public image of the building.

A Rooftop Given Back to the Town

Dark framed glass partitions reflecting rooftops and a red-tiled gable, with a children's play room and floor cushions beyond

Rooftop terrace with terrazzo paving, metal chairs and a mesh railing facing low town buildings under a pale evening sky

Metal staircase climbing to a rooftop antenna mast, with a church tower reflected in the glazing beside a terrace table

The stair ends at the top of the building, where a registry office and a café open onto a terrace with terrazzo paving, metal chairs and a mesh railing. The rooftop works as a light pavilion with views over low town roofs and the church tower. Putting the registry office here means weddings happen at the summit of the public route, which is a lovely piece of programming.

A children's play room behind dark-framed glass partitions, reflecting red-tiled gables, confirms that the top floor is meant for families, not only for officials. Even the steel stair climbing to the antenna mast is left in view, a reminder that this roof was once purely technical territory.

Plans and Drawings

Site plan drawing showing the building footprint outlined in bold among surrounding street blocks and a paved square with tree rows

Floor plan drawing of an office level with desk rooms along both sides, a central core and a rooftop terrace above

Section drawing cutting through a multi-storey building, with a diagonal stair rising through the floors and people shown on each level

Three axonometric diagrams of a layered block showing circulation arrows and a diagonal stair with people descending toward the street

The site plan places the block firmly on the edge of the square and its tree rows, which explains why opening the ground floor matters so much. The typical floor plan shows the logic plainly: desk rooms along both façades, a central core, and the terrace above.

The section and axonometric diagrams are the clearest argument for the project. The diagonal stair cuts through every level, people are drawn on each floor, and the arrows lead down to the street. The new layers wrap the retained frame rather than replacing it, which is how the building meets current energy, fire-safety and comfort standards while keeping its original structural logic visible.

Why This Project Matters

Central and Eastern Europe is full of postwar administrative buildings that are unloved, underperforming and easy to condemn. Přerov shows a credible alternative to demolition: keep the frame, the grid and the arcade, re-render in the original material, and spend the money on the few moves that change how the public uses the building. On a constrained budget, retention was the economic choice, and atelier gram turned it into an architectural one.

The larger lesson concerns visibility. Making circulation public, and ending it at a roof the whole town can use, reframes what a town hall is for. Bureaucracy becomes something you can watch and walk through rather than something hidden behind a gridded wall. Other municipalities with 1960s and 1970s civic blocks should study this one closely.

City Hall in Přerov by atelier gram (lead architects Anne-Sereine Tremblay and Jan Kudlička), Přerov, Czechia. Area: 5,000 m². Year: 2026. Photography: Maxime Delvaux.

About the Studio

atelier gram

Official website of atelier gram, one of the studios behind this project.

ateliergram.com

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