City above the City

Karel Prager (1923 – 2001) was definitely on of the most significant Czech architects. After he built the new building of the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia, a superstructure above the existing building of the former stock exchange, he designed a much bigger and controversial building complex – the “city above the city”, a huge housing and urban project for Prague – Košíře.

It was never built, but Prager’s work is so inspiring that I decided to create an architectural rendering based on his Košíře housing. All I had was a picture of this model, no drawings, no plans.

I used Google SketchUp, Kerkythea for a basic render and a lot of Photoshop.

SketchUp model:

And basic rendering before Photoshop postproduction:

(The final 3300 pixels wide PSD has 150 MB and about 100 layers, groups and adjustments… wow!)