The department stores’ golden era is definitely gone. Yet there are still ways to keep these structures not only alive, but to imbue them with new relevance. Architect Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli—who previously explored this topic at OMA and now continues to focus on similar projects through his own studio, 2050+—spoke with us about the future of department stores and the possibilities for their transformation.

Referencing local town houses lined with ground floor arcades which dominated the area until the 1960s, the design of the Nové Lauby apartment building in Ostrava forms a single compact city-block volume to reinforce the historical street structure. The building mass changes appropriately to the immediate surroundings. Some design features on the ground floor, a changing height of the cornice and different window arrangements suggest where individual houses of the block start, but overall the building has a unified character. Functionally, it uses a set of five separate communication cores. Inside the block there is a quiet courtyard. The ground-floor restaurant facing Velká Street features a series of arched windows shaded by a shallow overhang. This wider section of the street forms a pedestrian zone as a continuation of the existing Old Town Hall arcade.

You are what you eat. This motto from an early-2000s reality TV show can be rephrased into something even more telling: you are the culture you consume. But can culture really be consumed? Misunderstanding culture as an object of consumption leads to its degradation into mere leisure entertainment—and misses the meaning of the word, which comes from the Latin ‘colere.’ This conflict of interpretation has recently surfaced in České Budějovice, as the city prepares for its European Capital of Culture (ECoC) term in 2028. The political leadership and the cultural public clearly subscribe to very different definitions. And it’s becoming clear that when culture is approached the wrong way, the ECoC title might end up doing more harm than good. The effects are most visible in architecture and in how public space is managed. In short, České Budějovice seems to be headed toward international embarrassment.

We tend to think that the cities we live in are mostly the result of systematic planning and design by architects and urbanists—and that this is basically how cities come to be. But that’s not the whole truth. In fact, there are many other forces that shape cities in significant ways: everyday life, people’s interactions, ordinary, day-to-day events. And sometimes, exceptional events leave extraordinary traces on the city’s material form.

The Krkonoše Museum in Vrchlabí was founded in 1883 by the Austrian Krkonoše Association and has been housed in a former Augustinian monastery since 1966. Ecclesiastical architecture does not lend itself well to contemporary museum exhibitions. The recent renovation therefore required a highly sensitive approach—one that would preserve the monastery’s architectural and historical value, while carving out space for a contemporary retelling of the story of the mountains. To accommodate a lecture hall, museum shop, elevator, and visitor facilities, a new concrete entrance structure was added—its form evoking a rugged rock formation. The entire visitor route has been reorganized, too. The cloister garth plays a unique role, both in the exhibition and in the monastery’s architecture, symbolizing the Earth’s connection to the Universe and its spiritual essence.