Prague - Half as many projects as in the inaugural year applied for the second year of the Czech Architecture Award. Just like last year, buildings created in the past five years can compete. This year's edition is dominated by new constructions at the expense of renovations, while last year a large number of renovations competed and were awarded. According to the international jury, the star of this year's competition is the South Moravian Region, which is nominated ten times. A total of 42 nominations were announced today by the organizers in the cultural zone Pragovka in Prague’s Vysočany. In November, the ten finalists and one main winner will emerge from these nominations.
Among the authors of the nominated buildings are both established studios and young, lesser-known creators. Seven studios are represented twice in the nominations, such as D3A, Baum & Baroš architects, which is the author of two nominated bridge structures, last year's finalist Atelier M1 Architekti, Pelčák and partner studio, and architect Jan Šépka.
This year, architects submitted nearly 250 of their works to the competition. The most common theme among the nominations is family houses, with eight making it to the shortlist. They are followed by exhibition projects, such as Perception by Jan Šépka in České Budějovice or the airship Gulliver on the roof of the Holešovice DOX center, authored by the Hut of Architecture Martin Rajniš, and buildings in the field of education. Four transport structures also appear among the nominations: the footbridge in Hradec Králové, Komenského bridge in Jaroměř, a parking house in Brno, and the Gagarin terminal in Telč.
Very few of the submitted works focused on public space. Among them was the aforementioned Perception, a construction covering a fountain in České Budějovice on the occasion of Jan Šépka’s exhibition at the House of Art; in terms of daily visitor numbers, this installation was the most visited exhibition of last year. It attracted 36,000 visitors over 24 days, averaging 1,500 per day.
In the forest near the White Stream in Liberec, where Achim Šipl, a local resident, climber, and connoisseur of the Jizera Mountains, suddenly passed away, Rudolf Hůlka created a memorial for him. It takes the form of a four-meter stone block serving as a footbridge over the stream, where a golden inscription on its side commemorates Šipl. Hůlka's intervention into nature is subtle and shows how this type of architecture can also look.
Out of 42 nominations, 33 are new constructions. According to the organizers, this may indicate a revival in the construction market. A large portion of the projects comes from the private sector, primarily family houses and residential and administrative buildings. Half of the nominations were built with public funds, and only three of them resulted from an architectural competition.
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