At the peak of Ještěd mountain there is a building used both as a mountain hotel and as a telecommunications centre, especially for television. It was the prize-winning project of Ing. Arch. Karel Hubáček that led to the creation of this new structure on Ještěd, notable for both its shape, which seems to follow the landscape, with a curve that concludes in the sharp slope of the mountain, and for its unique and original approach to the construction. The exceptional character of the building led to it being awarded the Perret Prize in 1969, which is awarded to outstanding works of architecture and technical works relating to architecture. The building has the conical shape of a revolving hyperboloid, which was chosen by the author with regard to the extreme wind conditions. The main loadbearing structure consists of a reinforced concrete core comprised of two concentrated cylinders inserted on average 5 and 13 m into each other and firmly anchored in a massive circular foundaton slab fitted into an excavated subsurface at a depth of 1004 m, which meant it was first necessary to excavate 5000 m3 of solid rock. From the foot to the peak of the antenna fitting the building measures 94 m.
The lower two floors contain the machine room, technical equipment, and facility rooms. Above these there is a lookout terrace which accesses the restaurant and the hotel. The other four floors contain the lobby, the buffet, the restaurant for 140 people, the cafe for 55 guests, and a hotel with 90 beds. The telecommunication technology uses the space on the four floors above the hotel. The monumental peak of the buildings is a tubular extension, at the peak of which the 17m high antenna is fitted.
The Ještěd Mountain Hotel has been declared a state-protected cultural monument owing to its exceptional architectural and technical design, and is registered on the central list of cultural real-estate monuments under registration no.5-5828.

The positive political development in the Czech Republic has brought the country closer to a clear date of entry into the European Union. All assumptions point to the country being ranked as among the most serious candidates. Logically, each candidate country must fulfil an entire series of entry conditions, and one of the basic priorities of the Union is to ensure overall stability, even under exceptional circumstances. The continual increase in the conumption of petrol is one though not the only reason why the countries of the EU are obligated accommodate an increase in the volume of stored ninety-day petrol supply.
The joint-stock company MERO CR issued a call for tenders for expanding the existing capacity of the central petrol fuel station by three tanks with a total volume of 375 000 m3, which is to include the provision of the complex construction, and machine and technological facilities and support.
The machine technology is comprised of three large-volume tanks with a protective sump, fire extinguisher facilities, roof cooling, jacketing for the tanks, sumps, and fire pumps and underground reservoirs. The complex facilities also include pumping stations and effluence distribution systems, oiled and cleaned water treatment facilities, fuel distribution systems, and collecting tanks. The construction of the tanks will complement the existing complex of ten tanks with a volume of 50 - 100 000 m3. The overall area of the construction site set aside for expanding the storage capacity is 14 ha and at the present time the possibility of building a fourth tank is being looked into. Prepartions for the construction brought about the need to solve a large number of problems in the area of civil engineering, including, in the early phases, the need to assess the arrangements for ensuring the future stability of the new tanks. This led to the introduction of detailed and precise testing of the compaction of the foundations against the ensuing burden of the subsurface from the actual filling of the tanks.

Concrete is one of the traditional and most used construction materials. In the recent past the technology of concrete constructions has registered a fundamental innovation in the area of tensioning. These changes primarily arose out of the rising demands made on the quality of the construction, the inspection of working methods, the need to decrease the labour involved, shortening production deadlines, lowering construction costs, and last but not least the demands made to reduce heat escape.
The new components of concrete constructions mentioned in this article include:
Balcony insulation elements, sliding laths, reinforcement connectors, and connecting rods.