Metro D's Vinohrady Terminus Has Been Drawn, but It Has Not Been Designed

Dopravní podnik has published a new set of visualisations of two metro D stations that have not yet been built and will not be built for years: Náměstí Míru, the line's planned northern terminus, and Nusle, one stop south of it. The drawings cover platforms, vestibules, the individual exits to the street, situational maps and some of the ground around each station. Zdopravy.cz carried them on 15 September; Prague Morning on 18 September.

The important caveat is in both accounts. These are the designer's drawings, not an architectural proposal. The technical and spatial solution of both stations is largely fixed in the project documentation, and the published images do not represent the definitive architectural appearance of either one.

The two outlets differ on who drew them. Zdopravy attributes the whole set to Metroprojekt Praha, the line's designer; Prague Morning credits no studio with the stations themselves and mentions Metroprojekt only in connection with a ventilation outlet at Náměstí Míru.

Forty metres under Sázavská

Náměstí Míru will be mined rather than dug, built under Sázavská street about forty metres below the surface. It is a single-vault station with an island platform, and it sits directly above the existing line A station, with a step-free interchange between the two lines in the middle of the platform. There are to be two escalator vestibules and one lift vestibule.

The new images show the platform with its platform walls, the northern and southern vestibules, the exits towards Vinohradská, Francouzská and Sázavská, and a lift in Korunní. Metroprojekt has also drawn the ventilation structure in Riegrovy sady.

Nusle — prepared until recently under the name Náměstí Bratří Synků — is the opposite kind of station: cut and cover, an island platform roughly thirteen metres below ground, between Náměstí Bratří Synků and Otakarova. Two sub-surface vestibules are planned, with a connection to the trams, and an underground car park for residents above the station. The visualisations extend past the station to the exits onto the square, the northern vestibule under Otakarova, the completion of the block there and an idea of how part of the square and Otakarova street would be arranged. The ventilation structure near Perucká street is drawn separately.

Where the station can go is tightly constrained by what is already underground. Towards Náměstí Míru the route has to pass beneath the Botič; on the other side its position is governed by large sewers.

The architecture is a separate competition

What the stations will actually look like inside is to be decided by a competition DPP has not yet started. Prague's councillors approved holding it last year, and in July DPP tendered for a professional organiser. The plan is an open two-round competition run as a workshop, addressing the station interiors, soffit materials, lighting, furniture and artistic elements. It will not touch the urban siting of the stations, the construction method, the spatial parameters of the tunnels, platforms and escalators, or the technical plant. The public spaces immediately adjoining may be included. On DPP's earlier statement, winners should be known within eighteen months of the contract with the organiser being signed.

That is the sequence worth holding onto when looking at the pictures. The box is fixed, the surfaces are not, and the surfaces are all a passenger ever sees.

Not this decade

Construction of metro D started in 2022 on the section from Pankrác to Ryšánka, and in June this year extended to the following stretch to Nové Dvory. Pankrác–Nové Dvory is to be the first part in service, currently in the second half of 2032. The full route from Náměstí Míru to Depo Písnice is to be 10.6 kilometres and ten stations.

Náměstí Míru and Nusle belong to the next stage, I.D3, which takes the line north from Pankrác. DPP's April schedule puts its construction between the second quarter of 2029 and the first quarter of 2036 — indicative dates, which DPP updates as preparation and contracts advance. The drawings, in other words, are of a place no passenger will stand in for a decade.