In Snina, as one of the few smaller towns, two houses of culture were built during the socialist period. Both of them responded to the population growth and were connected to the construction of mass housing estates. The first was built as the centre of a housing estate to accommodate the employees of the Vihorlat engineering factory and it was a symbol of the socialist industrialisation project in eastern Slovakia. The construction of the second cultural house was related to the building of housing estates to provide accommodation for people evicted from the villages flooded by the Starina dam in the 1980s.
The architect of this cultural house was the experienced Bratislava architect Karol Paluš, the author of the largest socialist-realist housing estate on Miletičova Street in Bratislava. The Snina House of Culture was one of his last works.
Paluš designed the building as the focal point of a central square with a town office and a shopping centre. However, not as a landmark, but as the most distinctive unifying object of the pedestrian zone of the modern, loosened development of the city centre. The House of Culture is connected to the solitaire of the town office and creates an open parterre with services and a passage connecting the square with the neighbouring housing estate. Today this space is occupied by private businesses, but it still houses cultural and educational facilities such as the folk art school and the pensioners' club. The main cultural and social facility with two halls and a spacious foyer is on the first floor. The long, square-facing façade is articulated by large concrete surfaces with brightly coloured abstract paintings. Both the urban figure of the House of Culture and the concept of the parterre illustrate the penetration of postmodernism into the Slovak architectural environment.
Bibliography:
SVETLÍK, Ján: Akad. arch. Karol Paluš (27. 5. 1925) jubiloval, Projekt XXXIII, 1991, č. 3, s. 55
MORAVČÍKOVÁ, Henrieta - SZALAY, Peter. Domy kultúry na Slovensku: Vzostup a pád jedného typologického druhu. In Osvěta, kultura, zábava: kultúrní domy v Československu,Michaela Janečková, Irena Lehkoživoá (eds.) 2024, VI PER: Praha, 601 s.
