An international two-round urban design competition under the title "FLORENC21" was announced, seeking multidisciplinary teams to design a master plan for an important Czech transportation hub and a redevelopment site in the heart of Prague, Czech Republic. The deadline for applications with portfolios is 26 April 2021.
Florenc is a neighbourhood situated about 1km to the east of Prague‘s Old Town Square. Its present character is shaped by transportation infrastructure including a bus terminal, a train station and a metropolitan arterial road. At the same time, it is the largest brownfield in Prague‘s centre. Its name refers back to the 14th century when artisans from Italian Florence invited by Emperor Charles IV. settled here.
The objective of the international urban design competition is to find a viable proposal for a new mixed-use neighbourhood with new homes and spaces for Prague’s booming economy as well as places for leisure and retail. High-quality public spaces should be the backbone of new Florenc with liveable streets and plazas creating new links between Prague’s Nové Město and the trendy Karlín District.
“In the past, several masterplans were prepared for this area, most recently by Zaha Hadid Architects, but there has not been a sufficient agreement among key stakeholders for their implementation. That is why we, together with the key owners in the area, concluded that the best solution would be to organize an international urban design competition,” says Petr Hlaváček Deputy Mayor of Prague.
The Competition is organized as a cooperation of the City of Prague and Prague Institute of Planning and Development, Masaryk Station Development, a joint venture of Penta Real Estate and Czech Railways and ČSAD Praha Holding, a private operator of Prague’s central coach terminal.
A significant portion of the competition site is situated in the urban conservation area of the Prague Historic City Centre, a listed UNESCO World Heritage Site and the entire adjacent area falls in the world heritage site buffer zone.
The jury includes renowned architects and urban designers with extensive experience in regeneration projects in metropolitan centres including Kees Christiaanse /KCAP/, Winy Maas /MVRDV/ and Matthew Carmona /The Bartlett/ among others.
“We believe FLORENC21 is the first major urban design competition in a European metropolis organised in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. We expect competition teams not only to propose a design for Florence but also contribute to the current discussion on life in a post-Covid city”, says Petr Návrat from ONplan, the competition organizer.
The competition will be conducted in the form of three competition workshops, during which the jury, the clients, and other key stakeholders will engage in dialogue directly with the competing teams. The jury will select up to five teams based on their applications and portfolios to take part in the competition. The competition will have two phases. In Phase 1, the teams will prepare an urban regeneration concept plan for the interest area - which will be developed into a masterplan in Phase 2. Prizes and remuneration will total 440 000 EUR..
