Otakar Binar

“The first opening day was for employees. The Minister of Communications was there–I can't remember the name. Hubáček and I agreed, we went up the stairs, but we sat there. There was a kind of wavy mirror, and we sat by it inconspicuously. First, the Director of Civil Engineering gave a speech. Then he handed over diplomas to the workers. The truth is that the conditions there were clearly not simple. In autumn, it already gets cold there, it's freezing, and the wind is blowing. Especially the drivers did not have it easy because today the road to Ještěd is widened, but originally it was very narrow. When it snowed, it was not easy to get up there. The minister thanked everyone. We noticed that the director pointed at Hubáček, who sat there, to the minister. But the word Hubáček was never even mentioned. As if the architect Hubáček, the author of the building, was not there. When a decent moment came, we left the building.”

"When Hubáček assigned me the task, I had a problem; not only did I have no experience, but I assumed that the interior should preserve some kind of spirit of the object, that there should be unity. The building has somewhat of a wit. The object has unordinary technology. Aluminium and steel were used, which was not very common. For example, I tried to exclude wood, but that didn't quite work. So if there is wood, the surface is black. And white goes well with black. So there are a lot of combinations of black and white. The building has a wit. I managed to come up with a letter H system. The entire hotel room is equipped with them. It's two H’s, a frame is inserted between them, and it makes up a bed. Glass is placed on an H, and it becomes a table.”