Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: apartment

Another adventure that I had towards the end of the summer of 2009 was my exploration of the bike trail system around Prague. Ideally, if you're going to use a bike for transportation, the deeper inside a city you are, the better. Prague has it backwards, though. In the city centre, bike couriers are referred to as "organ donors," but in the suburbs, there is a bike trail system almost as extensive and complete as the road system, going pretty much anywhere you would want to go. I decided to work up to riding to Branik, but at the end of my adventures I did more than that. This trip was my first bike trip, when I only made it as far as Krc, but I took this shot with my cameraphone as I was leaving Haje. Surprisingly, I don't have many good shots of the "back" (to me, anyway) of this panelak, my favourite of the Haje panelaks because of the clock on either side, plus the fact that it's really a pair of towers with a bridge at the top (which you can't see in this shot).

In the post-Communist era, most of the Sidliste projects have been modernised and rebuilt, and most of these rebuilds have included colorful repainting. This is what happened when I took the relatively bleak winter scene below, and cranked the contrast and saturation up.

Sidliste housing projects surround Prague in all directions, and any good movie about Prague in the 1970's or 1980's will generally include scenes of their construction, which was a constant fixture of life at that time. Today, most are still occupied and doing well, in sharp contrast to East Germany, where many of their equivalents have been torn down.

The skyscraper in the back is called the "Twisting Torso," and is actually nothing less mundane than an apartment block, although it's the second highest one in Europe after the Triumph-Palace in Moscow. Completed in 2005, it was designed by Santiago Calatrava, and based on a sculpture by Calatrava that the building's contractor (and ultimately backer) saw in 1999. An interesting story, to be sure.