The Palach Memorial is in the competition for the Mies van der Rohe Award

Barcelona – The Jan Palach Memorial in the Central Bohemian town of Všetaty is one of 11 Czech buildings nominated for the prestigious Mies van der Rohe architectural award. The winner will be announced next April.

Currently, nearly 450 architectural works from 41 countries, completed between October 2018 and October of last year, are competing for the award. Another group of nominees will be known this September, comprising buildings completed between last November and this April.

According to data published by the organizing foundation, Spain has the strongest representation among the nominated projects, followed by France and Germany. Among the Czech candidates, besides the Jan Palach Memorial, there is also the revitalization of the Prague riverfront by architect Petr Janda of brainwork studio or the construction of a new kindergarten in the Liberec area of Nová Ruda by Petr Stolín and Alena Mičeková.

Some of the nominated buildings from the Czech Republic have already received awards domestically. The Lasvit headquarters in Nový Bor by the atelier ov architekti won the Czech Architecture Award last year. It also received the Grand Prix of Architects – National Award for Architecture in the category of Best Reconstruction. In the category of architectural design and reconstruction, the Palach Memorial by MCA Atelier also won this award last year. The building, which originated from the transformation of the original village house of the Palach family, belongs to the National Museum.

The Mies van der Rohe Award is usually awarded every two years by the European Union and the foundation bearing the name of the pioneer of modern architecture and the author of the most famous modern building in the Czech Republic, the Tugendhat Villa in Brno. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the schedule of the individual rounds has been shifted, and thus the winner's name will not be announced this year, but next year instead.

The award was first announced in 1988. The Czech Republic has participated in the Mies van der Rohe Award since 1997, and buildings located in the Czech Republic have appeared among the finalists several times.