Historically, the second holder of the Kaplicky Internship became Petra Ross

Prague - The Bakala Foundation, in collaboration with the London Design Museum and the Kaplicky Centre Foundation, has announced the winner of the second year of the competition for recent graduates of architectural fields, the Kaplicky Internship. This year, Petra Ross has become the holder of the professional award.

The winner, along with the award, received the opportunity to undertake a three-month internship at the prestigious London studio Zaha Hadid Architects, named after the recently deceased British-Iraqi architect. The announcement of the winner was preceded by a debate on Zaha Hadid's work titled "Zaha Hadid: Work and Legacy," which took place on Thursday at 6 PM at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.

The winner was decided by an independent expert jury, which included M. Arch. Melodie Leung, a longtime collaborator of Zaha Hadid from her London studio, Deyan Sudjic, the director of the Design Museum in London, and the project guarantor doc. ing. arch. Vladimír Krátký from the Faculty of Architecture at Czech Technical University. Foreign guests serving as jury members for the competition came at the invitation of the Bakala Foundation and the Kaplicky Centre Foundation.

Petra Ross is a recent graduate of the Faculty of Arts and Architecture at the Technical University of Liberec (Prof. Ing. arch. Akad. arch. Jiří Suchomel). The jury was impressed by her design for the London Public Library on a prominent parcel located by the River Thames near Tower Bridge.

"The challenge of the project was to replace the existing part of the park with a library while maximizing the preservation of greenery as an accessible public space. The main mass of the new building is lost beneath the elevated park, which also serves as a monumental umbrella for the general public, underneath which there is a passageway with additional functions including the library. By elevating the publicly accessible space to the roof, the park gains more sunny hours, and the building comes closer to meeting ecological standards," says Petra Ross about her design.
 
The winner of the Kaplicky Internship is selected through a two-round competition of architectural works on an open theme, in which last-year students from the architectural and civil engineering faculties of selected universities (CTU, VUT, TUL, AAU, VŠB TU, AVU) can participate. Their works first undergo pre-selection by responsible educators from the respective schools. This year, six emerging talented architects advanced to the finals - Anna Koukolová from the Faculty of Architecture at CTU Prague, Tadeáš Klaban from the AAU in Prague, Kateřina Mišáková from the Faculty of Civil Engineering at CTU Prague, František Novák from the Institute of Architecture at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of VUT in Brno, Norbert Obršál from the Faculty of Architecture of VUT in Brno, and Petra Ross from the Faculty of Arts and Architecture at the Technical University of Liberec. From these finalists, the overall winner was selected by the aforementioned expert jury based on interviews. The laureate of the Kaplicky Internship receives coverage of transportation costs and pocket money for the duration of the internship at the Zaha Hadid Architects studio in London from the organizers of the competition.

Last year, the very first winner of the Kaplicky Internship program was Ondřej Michálek from the AAU in Prague, who, based on his success, completed a three-month internship at the prestigious London studio of architect Eva Jiřičná.