Grand Prix of Architects has its headquarters in Brno at the firm MY DVA

Prague - The Grand Prix of Architects 2017 was awarded this evening to architects Ondřej Chybík and Michal Krištof. The jury awarded them the prize for the building for the headquarters and sales gallery of the office furniture company MY DVA on the outskirts of one of Brno's housing estates. The jury selected them because they believe it is a straightforward yet sensitive solution that gave the old building a new function and face with extraordinary elegance and a sense of humor. The facade of the building consists of chairs referencing the products manufactured by the company.

The results of this traditional national architecture competition, which has been competing with a new competition organized by the Czech Chamber of Architects for two years, were announced this evening at the Trade Fair Palace in Prague.

According to information on the Archiweb.cz website, the winning building was created by transforming a former car showroom. "The single-story building of poor aesthetic quality received a new, easily memorable face made of more than nine hundred black plastic seats," states the industry website. The abstractly conceived facade simultaneously serves as an advertisement for the company itself, according to the website.

The Lifetime Achievement Award was given posthumously to Jasan Burin (1929 to 2017). He completed most of his work in the USA, and the award organizer, the Community of Architects, highlights the building of the former Czechoslovak Embassy in London, where the architect was a member of the design team. "However, the architect’s most extraordinary architectural realization on Czech territory is the lock in Štětí," the organizers state.

The Czech-American architect, urban planner, draftsman, and educator studied architecture at the Czech Technical University in Brno under Bohuslav Fuchs, later becoming his assistant. He also studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under Jaroslav Fragner. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he moved to the USA.

In the category of new construction, the organizers awarded two prizes. One went to Radlická 142 residential building in Prague's Smíchov by authors Jan Šesták and Marek Deyl, the other to the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics, and Cybernetics in Prague Dejvice by author Petr Franta. In the design category, the prize went to the airship by Martin Rajniš, which is part of the DOX center, and in the landscape architecture category, the jury awarded the Březany cemetery by authors Zdeněk Sendler and Václav Babka. The jury gave seven honorable mentions, and an exhibition of the winning works has been accessible at the Trade Fair Palace since Friday.