The International Architectural and Urban Competition of the new PCC has its winner. The subject of the competition was the design of a new exhibition hall for the Prague Congress Center and its surrounding area.
“For a long time, the Congress Centre has been unable to meet high demands for exhibition and congress areas, and therefore it needs a new hall,” says Prague Mayor Adriana Krnáčová. “However, it is also important to address the entire area around the Prague Congress Centre so that it can serve more efficiently to people. We received a lot of designs and I am glad that a lot of them were of high quality and I believe that we eventually really picked the best one.”
The competition was open to participants from all over the world – 76 teams from 23 countries sent their designs. It represents the work of at least 400 architects, planners, engineers and other professionals. All designs were exhibited in the Prague Congress Center until October 5 in the south foyer. An eleven-member jury, with its chairman, architect Petr Hlaváček, chose from a large number of designs in the two-round competition.
The jury consisted of PCC representatives: Prague Mayor and Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board Adriana Krnáčová, Chairman of the Board of Directors Radim Haluz, General Director Roman Ray Straub, with support from Mark Kopec from IPR (Prague Institute of Planning and Development) and Councilor of Prague 4, Alžběta Rejchrtová.
The architectural professionals were represented by Petr Hlaváček and Ivan Kroupa, together with Elias Zenghelis from Greece, Mathias Müller from Switzerland and substitutes Viktoria Součková and Tomáš Koumár. Petr Hlaváček summarizes their collective work: “Great foreign juries with younger substitutes, keen representatives of the investor and politicians. In spite of the great diversity of the approaches of individual jurors, we largely acted in concord. I suppose that when a jury agreed on one design, it has the potential to captivate the public and other participants in the process.”
The first prize was awarded to the design of a young OCA studio from Barcelona run by Marc Subirana, Hernan Lleida Ruiz, Biela Susanna and Bernard Garcia. They explained, “We have set up our office to extend our work and opportunities beyond the local context of Barcelona or Catalonia. In this case, it was especially motivating that we could contribute to the building of such significance in a historic city like Prague. It was a challenge when we realized how complex this task is, and that it means not only to solve the functionality of the building but also to create an intensive public space. This is the key aspect of our design.”
The second prize was received by Francisco Jorquera’s team from Palma de Mallorca.
Elia Zenghelis, co-founder of the famous OMA office and currently a professor at Yale School of Architecture, said, “The original building of the Prague Congress Centers has to deal with the identity of a very impressive monument of the Communist era, which must be re-formulated. This includes a new look, a position within the city and a connection to a complex traffic situation. This complexity has been mastered by the authors of the winning design.” From the 76 proposals mentioned above, the jury selected the best six in March. The chosen authors further elaborated their designs for the second round. The authors of the awarded designs will be, in addition to receiving the financial reward, invited to further negotiation procedures without a publication in which the contract assignment will be decided. Four other teams that have not reached the prize will receive a sketch fee for participating in the second round. Since the third prize was not awarded, this amount was evenly distributed among the finalists.
The 1st prize: OCA / Bernardo García, Marc Subirana, Biel Susanna, Hernan Lleida; cooperation: Joaquim Sellas, Play-Time architectonic image, Anabel Lazaro, Josep Ramon Rius, Silvia Juventeny, Simona Sulcová, Alfambra copisteria and Francesc Villena (Barcelona, España)
The 2nd prize: Francisco Jorquera; cooperation: Catalina Riera, Sebastiano Rossi, Juan Jorquera, Cubic consultors (Palma de Mallorca, España)
Further finalists: TAKENAKA EUROPE / Peter Mulík, Václav Sobolík, Haruka Fuji, Adam Huleja, Peter Chládek, Ivana Jedrzejková, Tomáš Jelínek, Eliška Křížová, Lenka Marečková, Tomáš Palkovský, Martin Šťastný; cooperation: Vladislav Bureš, Václav Mach, Jiří Petlach, Aranka Vondráčková (Prague, Czech Republic)
Szymon Rozwałka, Rudolf Müller, Martin Křivánek;cooperation: Anna Glajc, Barbora Jurčíková, Oliver Kažimír, Petra Krajčová, Matúš Peklanský; technical cooperation: Eva Fajkusová, Pavel Hladík, Jiří Janoušek, Stanislav Král, Ondřej Navrátil, Albert Novák, Petr Preininger, Luboš Zbranek (Brno, Czech Republic)
Office of Adrian Phiffer / Dimitrios Karopoulos, Saarinen Balagengatharadilak, Diana Franco Camacho, Michael DeGirolamo, Chloe Leung, Liusaidh Macdonald, Duc Anh Nguyen; cooperation: Silman Structural Engineers / Nat Oppenheimer, Aniket Zarekar; Transsolar / Linda Lam; Lam & Associates / Alex Tan, Patrick Lam; Propos Liberec; Martin Hejl (Toronto, Canada)
FAR frohn & rojas / Marc Frohn; cooperation: Treibhaus Landschaftsarchitektur Berlin / Deniz Dizici; Wetzel & von Seht / David Fuentes Abolafio, Wolfgang Keen; pin planende ingenieure / Norbert Müller; ARGUS Stadt und Verkehr / Christoph Ludwig (Berlin, Deutschland)
PCC is the largest congress centre in the Czech Republic. It offers a wide variety of space suitable for all kinds of events from small conferences to big congresses, high technical standards and great acoustics. Its advantage is the location near the city centre, breathtaking views and municipal transportation accessibility. The total capacity is up to 9,300 people and 13,000 m² of exhibition space and the complex also includes the Vyšehrad Business Centre and the four-star Holiday Inn Prague Congress Centre with 254 rooms. PCC has been certified with EKO Gold for being supplied 100 percent of electricity produced from renewable resources. For more info, visit
