A Derelict Strip by Nádraží Holešovice Opens as Spot Holešovice

Praha 7 has finished Spot Holešovice, a public sports and play ground on the strip between Plynární and Vrbenského streets, a short walk from the Nádraží Holešovice metro station. The district announced completion on 3 September and ČTK carried it the same day. The land was previously neglected and unused; the total build cost was around CZK 6.5m, of which roughly CZK 500,000 came from partners — Alza, Syner and Donart Production.

It is the third piece of ground of this kind that Praha 7 has brought into use this year. Mayor Jan Čižinský (Praha Sobě) placed it in that sequence:

Spot Holešovice is another example of how an almost dead part of the city can be turned into living public space that gains new meaning and use for the general public. Together with the football pitch under the railway bridge at Vltavská and the basketball courts under the Barikádníků bridge in the park U Vody, it is the third new place this year where there used to be nothing and where people can now do sport and spend their free time for free.

— Jan Čižinský, mayor of Praha 7

Two halves, one of them unusual

The sports half is conventional and generously equipped: basketball hoops, a football arena, a U-ramp, an outdoor workout rig, a table-tennis table, a punchbag and a trampoline, with a rest area alongside that has toilets and picnic tables.

The other half is an adventure playground, and it works on a different principle. There are no fixed play items. Children are given materials, objects and tools they can move, combine and build with — huts, structures, whatever they devise — so the layout changes as visitors change it. The district developed it with the association Město přátelské k dětem, which has been building the format in Czechia, and it follows Praha 7's own Hravá Tusarka. ČTK notes that the concept originated in Denmark in the 1940s and that Prague already has another example, at Vypich in Praha 6.

That kind of playground needs staffing rather than just inspection, which is why the hours are tighter than the rest of the site. Spot Holešovice as a whole is open daily from 8am to 8pm from September to May and until 9pm from June to August. The adventure playground opens from April to September daily except Mondays, 2pm to 7pm, and 2pm to 6pm in October, with instructors from the Praha 7 children's and youth centre present throughout to supervise play, look after the materials and check the structures for safety.

Who designed it, and who built it

The architectural solution is by Martin Hrouda and Andrea Nováková of U / U Studio. The large-format paintings on the site are by the artist Jakub Karlík, made with students of the Střední průmyslová škola oděvní. Pupils and students from three neighbouring schools — ZŠ Bratrská, the Střední průmyslová škola oděvní and the Vyšší odborná škola oděvního návrhářství — worked on the proposals for how the ground should be used.

Jiří Knitl, the Praha 7 councillor for the environment and public space, singled out who did the physical work:

I also see great value in the fact that pupils and students from the surrounding schools took part in the preparations, and that staff from our department of development and care for public space were themselves actively involved in building the Spot.

— Jiří Knitl, councillor of Praha 7 for the environment and public space

The district is treating the scheme as unfinished on purpose: it has published three surveys — one for children and one for adults on the adventure playground, one on the sports section — asking what should be added next. Both sources give the same cost and the same description of the site, with no discrepancy between them; the district release carries the funding breakdown and the design credits, which the ČTK report does not.

Read against the district's other two conversions this year, the pattern is consistent and modest in ambition: leftover ground near infrastructure — under a railway bridge, under a road bridge, beside a metro station — taken at a cost a district budget can carry, and opened without a fence around a membership.