The Dancing House

Modern Prague architecture sensitively set into the original buildings to commemorate Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

The Dancing House, sometimes also called Ginger and Fred, is the most notable modern structure on the right bank of the Vltava River at the Jirásek Bridge. The building's name is inspired by the famous dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It is the first construction of top world architects Frank Gehry and Vlado Milunić to be built in Prague after the Velvet Revolution. The design of the interior of the offices was partly entrusted to British architect of Czech origin Eva Jiřičná.

At that time it was indeed an audacious construction, which brought modern architecture to the traditional urban environment, and also unleashed a heated public debate about Prague architecture. Despite these stormy discussions and often negative attitudes towards the Dancing House, it won a number of awards at home and abroad, including design awards in a poll by Time magazine. The building today houses offices, exhibition spaces, a café and a luxurious restaurant.

The construction is based on reinforced concrete slabs and consists of a reinforced concrete structure with 99 original facade panels.

Interestingly the site of the Dancing House was originally occupied by an apartment building that was destroyed by American bombs in 1945 in an accidental aerial bombing of Prague. The idea to build on the resulting space arose in the 1990s in cooperation with Vlado Milunić and Vaclav Havel, who lived in the neighbouring building, where Milunić had designed interior modifications for him. Milunić first approached architect Jean Nouvel (who later built Zlatý Anděl), but he refused. The offer was taken up by Frank Gehry, who said that "for a country that has given America Jaromir Jagr, I'll do anything". The investor of the construction was Nationale Nederlanden, today ING.

In 2013 Management of real estate in Prague (Pražská správa nemovitostí) bought the building for more than 13 million.