JFK 2010 - absolute winner and first place in the urbanism category

Prague is twenty years since the change of political regime and relationships between people. Prague has changed, come alive. The city eagerly welcomed a wave of Western European tourists who came to see the long-closed gallery of the Soviet Union before it is permanently closed. Following the example of the West, new business districts are being built. Traffic has become denser. A road bypass around Prague is being planned. The construction of new skyscrapers is being considered. The city is developing /as always in history/ polycentrically, like several cities, but its optical center remains the Prague Castle with Hradčany. The wealth and uniqueness of Prague with its characteristic genius loci is found in a relatively narrow location on both banks of the Vltava, around Charles Bridge. The communist regime no longer suppresses people's freedom, but seems to be perceived as a nostalgic memory. Soviet army caps are offered to tourists in the alleys of the old town along with matryoshkas, T-shirts with Che Guevara, and symbols of the former totalitarian power. Prague has become a frozen gallery “Eastern Europe” set in medieval spaces. The streets and the dimly lit squares created a backdrop for action movies set deep behind the Iron Curtain… J. Rudiš wrote that Prague is “a preserved city of beer idyll”... On Charles Bridge, a group of foreigners in “drinking team czech republic” shirts is taking pictures with the panorama of Hradčany… Prague relies too much on its historical monuments and seems to forget to live in the present. Prague is a city living between the nostalgic memory of what is no longer and what has not yet come… Prague has no vision for what’s next, what will be in the future. No thoughts on where its development should head. The question remains… Where is “radiant” architecture responding to the environment of freedom? Where is the enthusiastic construction boom that Berlin experienced after the fall of the wall?? Where are the “clear”, free-spirited and bold plans of people who can once again breathe freely after a long period of oppression??? Prague is on the brink of the third millennium… what can change?

The proposal for a new Prague linear district in greenery originated from the initiative of President Václav Havel as a student project by Michal Krejčík at the Faculty of Art and Architecture at the Technical University in Liberec in the studio of prof. Ing. arch. akad. arch. Jiří Suchomel with expert consultations from prof. Ing. arch. Miroslav Masák.