Ještěd in a Cage 2008 - Official Announcement

On Wednesday, January 20, 2009, six distinguished figures from the Czech architectural scene freed themselves from their daily duties to come to Liberec and assess dozens of projects submitted by students from the local faculty of architecture. After a day-long effort by the jury to find the needle in the haystack, an evening ceremony took place to announce and award the most interesting projects.
The Liberec School of Architecture stands poised somewhere between large technical universities and small art schools. Although it falls under a technical university and continuously admits an increasing number of students each year, it manages, especially thanks to one shared studio space, to maintain the atmosphere of art schools. The Liberec “hangar” has the invaluable quality of easily adapting to almost any function, from a sports court to a large office, lecture hall, or a venue for various happenings. These days, the Liberec studio has transformed into a large gallery, unlike that of any other school in the Czech Republic. For the second week now, all student projects have been exhibited in one place. It allows for a quick overview of the overall level of the school. One does not have to run between floors from one room to another, worrying about missing any studio. Here, everything is gathered clearly in a single space. You have peace, and you do not have to search anywhere. Anyone not hanging around here is not a student at the school. This may have made it somewhat easier for the jury of the second year of Ještěd in their decision-making.
It was surprisingly easy to assemble the external jury on the first attempt. On a frostbitten Wednesday, editor Irena Fialová, architect Jakub Fišer from the Aulík Fišer architects studio, Prokop Tomášek from the A69 – architects studio, and Petr Hájek with Jan Šépka from the HŠH architects studio gathered, who elected professor Martin Rajniš as their spokesperson and chairman.
Decision-making was not easy. The jury considered both small design objects and large urban planning projects. There were no clearly defined rules for evaluation, which the committee had to create on that day itself. Ultimately, four students had to share the coveted Ještěd in a cage: Jana Hlavová for linear urbanism of the soon-to-be-flooded village of Nové Heřmínovy, Václav Toufar for the preform of a church in Prášily, Vojtěch Malina for a minimalist design of a residential two-wheeler, and Jindřich Ráftl for a virtual experiment in kinetic architecture. The jury missed a clear profiling of individual studios and thus decided not to award any prize in this category. In the open studio, everyone has an immediate overview of what their neighbors are doing, and good ideas spread like an avalanche, which can be considered rather beneficial.
Students from every architecture school in the Czech Republic might secretly wish their award had the most interesting name with the longest tradition. However, much more valuable is the fact that the entire semester was not spent designing something that would immediately disappear unnoticed into an archive, and at most they could make another notch in their portfolio. The students received feedback from an impartial jury that saw their project with an unburdened perspective.
The concluding speech from Martin Rajniš infused everyone with new energy for the next semester. After the awards were presented, the Liberec studio transformed into one big party, and when there is something to celebrate, it celebrates itself.