At the end of World War II, a bomb hit the center of Znojmo and damaged part of the buildings under the town hall tower. After the war, it was considered that the destroyed block of houses would be replaced by a new town hall building, but this plan was not realized. This space on the main square of Znojmo had been empty for so long. In the second half of the 1960s, it was decided that a new department store would be built on a fallow plot on the main square of Znojmo, according to a design by Brno architects Bohuslav and Kamil Fuchs, father and son. Since the mid-1950s, they have often worked together on urban planning concepts for historic cities and the design of public spaces. The most prestigious task of national cultural importance was the competition for the architectural and urban design of the buildings around the National Theatre in Prague. The prominent European architect Bohuslav Fuchs has been leading the Brno studio of the State Institute for the Reconstruction of Historic Towns and Buildings since 1954, where Kamil Fuchs also worked, and since 1963 as the head of the studio. Both architects therefore understood very well the difficulty of the task of sensitively integrating the new department store into the historical core of Znojmo. They developed the project for the department store as early as 1969. According to Kamil Fuchs' diary entries, the construction was heavily discussed from the beginning in the design and implementation phases, which is why its implementation dragged on for 6 years, and Bohuslav Fuchs did not live to see it. The Dyje department store was officially opened on February 25, 1975. The building encloses the main square and at the same time creates the base for the distinctive dominant of the town hall tower. It was necessary to respect the prevailing three-story height of the surrounding historical buildings. The building is therefore designed in accordance with the rhythm and scale of the entire historical space, but applies a modernist architectural expression based on functionalism - it applies simple block volumes, strip windows and a visually lightened ground floor in the spirit of Le Corbusier's principles. These elements are complemented by the brutalist use of exposed concrete. The horizontal facade, lightened by a free partner and a loggia on the first floor, is dominated by a ceramic relief of the Znojmo eagle by Brno sculptor Jiří Marek.
The Dyje department store, which is still in operation today, was heavily criticized by the general public from the beginning, in whose eyes it still wrongly belongs to the most controversial projects of the Fuchs father and son. Although it is undoubtedly a very high-quality example of modern architecture in a historical environment.

Lucie Valdhansová