Prague Starts the Faculty of Arts Memorial With a Brief, Not a Competition

Prague's councillors have taken the first formal step toward a permanent memorial to the fourteen people killed in the 21 December 2023 shooting at Charles University's Faculty of Arts. On 5 October they approved the creation of a working group whose job is to write the brief for an architectural and artistic competition on Jan Palach Square. Expats.cz reported the decision on 9 October from the city's own announcement; twenty-five people were injured in the attack.

What was not approved is the competition. The city says it will decide whether to hold one only after the brief has been written and discussed, and after the property, technical and heritage conditions of the site have been examined. There is no design, no budget and no construction timetable.

Who is in the room

The group brings together the Charles University rector's office, the Faculty of Arts, the Spojení nadějí association, the Prague Institute of Planning and Development, City Hall and Prague City Gallery. Bereaved families, injured survivors and others directly affected by the attack will take part in the preparations; the city says their involvement will respect their privacy, dignity, individual circumstances and wishes.

Deputy mayor Petr Hlaváček, who holds urban and strategic development, described the group as non-political and said a work of public art can take many forms — which is as far as the announcement goes on what the memorial might be. Tomáš Slabihoudek, the councillor for culture, said the memorial should give people a dignified place to remember while respecting the square's character, its historical context and its commemorative significance.

The brief before the design

The group's first task is editorial rather than procedural: to settle what the memorial should communicate, and how it should stand in relation to the faculty building and the square around it. Accessibility, safety, maintenance and long-term sustainability are named in the brief as well — the unglamorous half of anything left permanently in a public space.

Two constraints are already on the table. The first is the temporary memorial installed in the square six months after the shooting. The city says future proposals must approach it sensitively, respecting the circumstances in which it was created and its importance to the people who use it as a place of remembrance.

The second is that the square itself is being redesigned. Prague is preparing a reconstruction of Jan Palach Square, so the memorial has to be considered alongside that work and alongside the area's architectural and heritage value. The brief will be discussed with Prague 1, the transport operator DPP, the team preparing the square's reconstruction, heritage specialists and other institutions.

One square, three claims on it

Set side by side, those conditions describe a harder commission than a plaque. The square is already named for a death it commemorates; it holds a temporary memorial that has acquired its own constituency among the people who visit it; and it is about to be rebuilt. Writing the brief first, rather than opening a competition and leaving entrants to discover all of that from the site, is the part of Monday's decision likely to matter in a year — that is our reading of the announcement rather than a stated aim.

For now the city has committed to a process and to the people who will shape it, and to nothing about the object itself. The next decision point is the brief.