Náplavka's New Benches Took Twelve Years and One Prototype Left Out in the Weather

The first of twenty-seven new seating arrangements are being installed along Rašínovo nábřeží, and several are already in place between the railway bridge and Vyšehrad. They are made of massive oak beams from eastern Czechia, and they are anchored rather than merely stood on the quay, because the part of Prague they occupy is inside the Vltava's active flood zone.

Expats.cz reported the installation on 18 September. The whole contract will eventually add 69 individual oak elements, including two larger "nests" intended for picnics and groups, and the work is expected to finish by 15 October.

What anchoring a bench in a flood zone involves

The wooden elements sit on steel support frames fixed into concrete foundations. Putting each one in means lifting a section of the embankment's stone paving and then relaying it. The arrangements vary by location: a standard one holds between one and three large oak pieces, while each of the two gathering areas is made up of eight. The design works at two heights, which produces lower seats a child can use.

That is a lot of engineering for street furniture, and it is the reason the furniture is news. On a quay that goes under water, a bench is either a fixed structure or it is driftwood.

Eight and a half years of leaving wood alone

The material was settled by experiment rather than by specification. A prototype nest was installed at Náplavka in 2018 to test three timbers — azobé, oak and Canadian cedar — and two methods of anchoring. The wood was deliberately left untreated for the following eight and a half years to see what the riverside would do to it. Oak won on cost and on being available locally; the timber now going in comes from around the Orlice.

Petr Lešek of Projektil architekti, who designed the benches, gives comfort as part of the reason for wood: unlike stone or metal it stays reasonably comfortable to sit on in hot weather, and it answers the historic character of the riverfront.

A decade of paperwork behind a row of benches

The seating is older as an idea than the prototype. Prague commissioned a feasibility study in 2014, and the benches were written into the approved revitalisation concept for Rašínovo nábřeží in 2017 — the same programme that produced the rebuilt riverside vaults, the kobky, and the new utilities along the embankment. The furniture is one of the last items on that list.

Trade Centre Praha, the city company that manages Prague's riverbanks, says the point was not a straight swap.

We didn't want simply to replace old benches with new ones, but to offer different ways to use the space by the river — from a short sit to a longer rest with views of the Vltava or Prague Castle.

— Marta Pražáková, vice chair of the board, Trade Centre Praha

The two larger nests are laid out so that people sitting in them face one another instead of all facing the water, which is the one decision in the whole project that changes how the space is used rather than how long it lasts.

The price

The complete contract costs 4.121 million crowns before VAT. That covers the wooden and steel structures, the foundations, the ground work, the paving that has to be taken up and put back, transport and installation. The final price came in around 8 percent under the initial estimate.

Set against the scale of Náplavka — one of the busiest public spaces in the city — twenty-seven arrangements is a modest addition, and the sums involved are small by the standards of anything else the city builds on the river. What is unusual is the interval: twelve years from feasibility study to installation, of which eight and a half were spent watching a piece of untreated wood.