Urban Design Competition 2021

New Florenc... reconnecting and healing urban structure whilst evolving its own unique character. Integrating the city’s diverse quarters and growing a genius loci within. New structure strengthening and respecting its surrounding context. Transport exchange as an active social and cultural exchange hub. Dynamic and well-functioning urban hub and gateway to Prague. 24 hour place in close proximity to historic centre. A city conceived in human scale embracing intertwined stories and interpretations. Continuous and evolving city full of excitement and surprise with beautifully diverse and animated public spaces. A resilient and compact city quarter responding proactively to climate change. Active green and blue infrastructure fully embedded into the city organism. Urban structure encouraging walking and cycling. New urban structure contributing to city-wide green conections. Transformed place where everybody can work, live and enjoy an inclusive neighbourhood supporting health and wellbeing. Fantastic central location with all the city has to offer.

Our approach is structured around 5 interrelated topics or ‘scores’, which provide a narrative for both analysis and design – i.e., the study of the site in its historical layers as well as proposals for the area’s future development. The first score identifies the main urban actors defining Prague’s spatial armature: a viaduct, a park, a courtyard, a street front, a museum, a train station, and so forth. The second score foregrounds the actors’ roles in defining urban ensembles and, accordingly, the proposed project. The third score focusses on the significance of Prague’s blue and green infrastructure. Three primary landscape components are distinguished. The fourth score is dedicated to the viaducts that are part of Prague’s transportation infrastructure, all cutting through the existing city fabric: the historically protected Negrelli and Karlín viaducts; the potential viaduct of the NS2 connection; and lastly the re-dimensioning of the north-south arterial road or Magistrála as a viaduct in its own right. The fifth score addresses the assemblage of the disparate urban actors – the coming together of a park, a set of viaducts, a series of buildings along the tracks, an existing metro exhaust structure, and so on. What results from this encounter are particular urban spaces, with specific qualities and atmospheres, that aim to transform the current non-site into habitable places for human encounter.

Urban Heritage in Prague is recognised as world heritage for the way in which landscape and architecture have worked together to make each other more visible and therefore more beautiful. Local, but also foreign architects and planners working on Prague have historically managed to preserve the discernible tapestry of urban fabric going all the way to Prague’s foundations. From its core to the outer edges of present-day Prague, one can discern and trace historical vicissitudes which defined their respective urban morphologies and neighbourhoods with their communities and identities. People identified with these coherent units.

We propose that Florenc 21 becomes both - a key infrastructural node for Prague and a vibrant urban center rather than an urban black hole. Rather than doing a top down imposition of an idea with unrelated ur- ban organizations or disconnected logics, we propose to celebrate and enhance the existing qualities of the city and the site - the Negrelli historic and spatial qualities, the Těšnov park, the new Masaryk Centre Buildings, the proximity to the city center, all these elements contribute and inform the new urban development. 

In addition, we also propose to directly address its disadvantages trans- forming them into features and added value to the new development. We expand the newly converted streetscape in Na Florenci street through- out the site, continuing the city’s urban development connecting west to east, uniting the train station to the new bus station in a vibrant retail and office street promenade where people can walk, cycle, shop, mingle and much more. This main street is part of a set of new pedestrian promenades parallel to the tracks, that bend and follow the railroad bringing people from the west to the north-east of Prague, and vice-versa. 

In the Gardens of Florenc the leftover space, which now separates several of Prague’s districts, is adapted into a park where everyone, all sides of Prague, show their face and want to be seen. 

Using the plinth volumes of the built form, a green hill undulates over and under the infrastructure connecting all the separate mobility points into a grand terminal that is a destination in its own right. 

Citizens and visitors of Prague walk and cycle in the new Gardens of Florenc. Slow traffic and open green spaces help define the new identity for this central part of Prague. 

Two buildings inhabit the park like grand pavilions, their faces addressing all sides, frame views between city and nature. The gardens of Florenc are a monument to adaptation; a robust urban landscape that is designed to continuously evolve and work for everyone, including nature.