The Czech Architecture Award was won by architects for the reconstruction and extension of the Lasvit company's headquarters in Nový Bor

photo: Tomáš Souček

Prague – The main award of the Czech Architecture Award was won by Jiří Opočenský and Štěpán Valouch from the studio ov architekti for the reconstruction and extension of the Lasvit company's headquarters in Nový Bor. The authors reconstructed several traditional wooden buildings from the early 19th century for the glass company and complemented them with two new structures of similar shape but made from different materials, one of which is glass. Among the six finalists were also the revitalization of Prague's embankments, a wine shop, a kindergarten, a family house, and workshops for agricultural machinery.

"The awarded work is a combination of the original and the proposed, the old and the new, the traditional with the completely contemporary. It was the excellence of approach to the assigned problem and the ease with which the final output operates in such a complex architectural environment that led the jury to award the main prize," stated the jury regarding their choice. The winning building is, according to them, "an original, sovereign, and comprehensive work."

This year, the competition was open to works built in the territory of the Czech Republic between 2015 and 2019. In the final of the fifth edition of the award, the jury selected from 191 submitted works. New constructions, as in previous years, predominated over reconstructions, making up approximately three-fifths of the submitted projects. This year, it is also confirmed that an important topic in construction in the Czech Republic remains housing. Two-fifths of the submitted buildings (77) are housing projects, just like in the previous edition.