Ještěd Tower and Hotel

The wooden lodge on the summit of Ještěd burned down in January 1963, and the competition held a month later asked for a replacement that would also carry a television transmitter. Eleven entries came in; Hubáček's won because it refused to treat the two programmes as separate buildings. He proposed a single hyperboloid of revolution whose curve begins where the mountain profile ends, so that from Liberec the hill appears simply to continue upward into a mast. The same geometry solves the engineering: the shell sheds the summit wind, and a pendulum damper inside the shaft absorbs the sway. The hotel and restaurant occupy the flared base behind a continuous band of glazing; above them the cone tapers into the transmitter. Design took three years, construction seven, and it opened in July 1973. Hubáček had already received the International Union of Architects' Auguste Perret Prize for it in 1969, four years before anyone could stand inside.