Four Teams Left in the Competition for Budějovická, With a Winner Due in November

The jury of the Nová Budějárna competition has cut the field for the area around the Budějovická metro station to four teams. Two of the four are Czech: A8000 and UNIT architekti. The others are Harmonic + Masson & Associés of France and Howells of the United Kingdom. Edita Řeháková, the spokeswoman for Praha 4, gave the result to ČTK on 17 September.

The four will now develop their concepts into fuller proposals. The jury is due to pick a winner in November, and the client has said it will show every entry at an exhibition once the competition has closed.

What the brief is actually for

The competition covers roughly 40,000 square metres bounded by four streets — Budějovická, Olbrachtova, Poláčkova and Antala Staška. That is the block that holds the metro station, the DBK department store and the office buildings around them.

What is worth reading in the brief is how much of it is not buildings. Alongside new construction, the competition asks for the functioning of the whole area, the legibility of its public spaces, better access into the metro, greenery, stormwater management, the safety of the surroundings of the Poláčkova primary school, and the working of its shops and services.

Those are municipal concerns, and they are in a competition run by the landowner. The city hall and Praha 4 are co-organisers alongside Penta Real Estate and the DBK department store, which is what puts them there. A scheme of this size at a metro station would otherwise reach the district as a finished design with the public realm already fixed.

Who is on the jury, and what they said

The jury is chaired by the German architect Stefan Behnisch, who described the entries as varied rather than converging.

The concepts submitted showed a high standard and at the same time differing views of the future of Budějovická. Choosing the four that go through was therefore a challenge. The jury held a detailed discussion over the proposals and was looking for solutions in which it sees the greatest potential for further development.

— Stefan Behnisch, chair of the jury (translated from the Czech)

For the second stage, Behnisch said, what will matter is how the teams sharpen their strongest ideas and work them up into a comprehensive solution. That is the standard second-phase instruction, but it is also an admission that none of the four arrived complete.

Why this land came onto the market at all

Penta, together with MAT Corporation — the owner of the DBK and Europark shopping centres — bought three buildings around Budějovická from Česká spořitelna. The bank is selling its present headquarters ahead of a planned move to a new head office in Smíchov in 2028.

That sequence is the whole reason a competition is being held here now. The new owners say they intend a complete transformation of one of the busiest parts of Praha 4, and the land assembly came first: three buildings in one set of hands, released by a corporate relocation across the river.

Read together with the timetable, the November decision lands well before the bank actually leaves. Whatever the jury picks will be a design for a site still in use.