Liberec will create a new department with a city architect

Liberec - Liberec will create a new department with a city architect, which should, among other things, ensure the coordination of development projects, the creation of land studies, or transportation concepts. According to Mayor Jaroslav Zámečník (SLK), the architect's office should have six employees and is set to start operating from July.

The city architect will emerge from a selection process, according to Zámečník. "We will reach out to urban architects; at least I envision such a focus," the mayor told reporters. In the architect's office, according to him, there should also be two additional architects, a transportation specialist, a landscape architect, and one administrative worker. The mayor estimates the total salary costs for the entire department at 3.8 million Czech crowns. The office should take over some activities that the city has previously assigned externally.

The establishment of the city architect position has been discussed in Liberec for a long time; supporters of this idea believe it should have a positive impact on the architectural and urban design of the city. The previous city council dealt with this by creating a seven-member Architects' Council. Liberec is not the only town in the region to have such a position. Semily has had its city architect for many years, they began collaborating with one in Česká Lípa last year, and since April this year, Jablonec has had one as well, who is David Pavlišta.

According to Zámečník, a roughly twenty-point job description has been approved for the new department. It should create, for example, land studies in connection with the upcoming new land-use plan. According to the mayor, there are about 50 areas in it that are special, valuable, or need architectural resolution. "If the land study is not processed, the obligation to have it would be abolished, and the city would then be in a disadvantaged position," the mayor stated. He cited locations such as the so-called Paper Square or Textilana as examples for study preparation. The office should also create a city manual for public space. This would standardize, for example, the surfaces used on roads. "To prevent situations like in Soukenné Square, where several materials meet at the tracks in front of Dunaj and it looks like a dog's breakfast," added the mayor. According to him, the office should also serve as a service for architectural competitions. The city wants to take the route of directly reaching out to several architectural studios, which would present conceptual designs. Such a competition is planned, for example, for the renovation of the façade of the bureaucratic building Uran, where the facade made of so-called Boletice panels should be replaced with another to better harmonize the building with its surroundings. Other such competitions will be held for the design of the Market Square or the planned construction of a composting plant.

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