Tereza Dvořáková↓

About the work

Tereza Dvořáková designed the reconstruction of the way station Pávov on the right side of the D1 highway. Her spatial arrangement preserves the gas station roof and removes the rest of the existing architectures. All functions (toilettes, showers, restaurant, shop, laundry, and service base) fuse in a new building. This construction, convex towards the landscape and over 100 meters long, serves as a borderline that distinctly encloses the pull-in, delineated by a forest. A recreational terrace, embracing the entire building, provides open views of the distant Vysočina Mountains. The eye there embraces a seemingly endless rape field, whose area and appearance are painful remarks of the former forest. Both the expression and form of the design are intentionally profane and non-spectacular. One of the author’s points of departure is the idea that architecture does significantly influence its users, but cannot serve as a tool capable of transforming society.

The two authors of Pávov – Tereza Dvořáková and Vojtěch Beran – at the same time stress that “a single way station does not make a summer”. As to the D1 highway, heavily manipulated by commercial and corporate interests, the given reconstruction must be systematical: it mainly must take due account of the frequency how pull-ins of various sizes would alternate. An essential part of this should be withdrawing from the disadvantageous contracts closed between the Head Office of Roads and Highways and the keepers of the way stations, dating to the early 1990s, and putting an increased accent on the maintenance and supervision of observing general and traffic rules.