Until the major systemic changes associated with the Velvet Revolution, the owner of Brno Exhibition Centre (BVV) complex was the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Therefore, sub-companies that were under the ministry, especially the Foreign Trade Enterprise (PZO), promoted their business interests at the exhibition centre. It followed that PZO Tuzex had a department store built in the western part of the exhibition grounds.
It was built in the area designated for a shopping centre in the development plan of 1977. However, its eventual location was shifted 150 metres further to the south than was indicated on the plan, which increased the walking distance from the tram stop on Hlinky and meant that the building was practically isolated. The Tuzex building is also close to a large city ring road, and, since 1998, it has stood by the entrance to the Pisárecký tunnel that connects the ring road to the D1 motorway to Prague. It is located between the 9th and 10th gates on the western side of the exhibition grounds.
The building was designed by Josef Pálka and his team from the State Design Institute for Trade in Brno and it was built between 1986 and 1988. It had three-storeys and halls with centrally located escalators, which connected the two commercial floors. The mass of the building consists of a simple block with a prefabricated reinforced concrete skeleton and several connected blocks of glass and steel. The main entrance is located in an elevated centrally situated glazed avant-corps with staircase, which ends in a roof that is segmented, as is the arch over the skylight of the top floor. There was also a pentice copying half of the cylindrical roof structure around the perimeter of the building on the ground floor that was directly connected to the 9th gate of the exhibition centre, designed by Jaromír Stříbrný. All of the steel structural elements were painted bright yellow in contrast to the sober light ceramic cladding on most of the facade and the dark smoky Elekrofloat glass. Above the stairs to the second floor there is a sheet metal relief wall with motifs of the exhibition centre and modern technologies by an unknown artist. Store rooms are located in the separated rear part of the building.
The building has changed as a result of modifications during a renovation in 2013, after which the building was renamed New Tuzex. It is now called Riviera and functions as a shopping centre for building supplies, home interiors and sporting goods and is home to many specialized retailers and firms. The modifications include the division of the interior space into individual shops and showrooms and the covering of most of the facade with a large black tarpaulin that displays the advertising banners of the resident firms. The roof structures and other yellow features have gradually been repainted in black or white. The most recent modification was the breaking through of a second row of windows on the front facade, which, at least in its arrangement, attempts to respect the original windows. The original Elektrofloat glass has been preserved but the overall effect of the building has completely changed since the ceramic cladding gave way to the cheap tarpaulin.
MK