The Danish studio Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) will design the new building for the Vltava Philharmonic in Prague. The winner of the international competition announced by the capital city was presented by Prague Mayor Zdeněk Hřib (Pirates) and his deputy Petr Hlaváček (TOP 09) at a gala evening at the Prague Centre for Architecture and Urban Planning.
During the gala evening, which was aptly underscored by the strains of Bedřich Smetana’s Vltava, representatives of the Czech capital presented the winning design for the Vltava Philharmonic building. Its authors are architects from the world-famous Danish studio Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).
“Prague is a city of 100 towers, and I can’t imagine a greater honor as an architect than to be able to add more towers to those towers,” said the head of the Danish studio, Bjarke Ingels when accepting the award.
The city launched an architectural competition to design the building about a year ago. It was chosen from 19 entries that made it to the final round. Experts highly appreciated the representation of world-famous and highly respected studios that showed interest in the new Prague concert hall design.
The need to build a dignified and, above all, modern concert hall has been discussed at various levels for several decades, not only in Prague. For several years, it has been known that the new cultural hall should be built-it is a brownfield site in Prague’s Bubny district, i.e., near the Vltavská metro station.
The building, which will house three halls at the highest technical level and with excellent acoustics, will become a harbor for two musical ensembles: the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK. It will probably also house the music department of the Prague City Library. There will also be cafés and other facilities. The city intends to offer the citizens of Prague, not only them, a place that will be lively throughout the day and not only during the evenings.
The organizer of the architectural competition was the Institute of Planning and Development of the City of Prague. Now the project is being taken over by the city’s contributory organization, the Prague Development Company (PDS), which was established by the town to prepare building projects on city plots.
According to current assumptions, the Vltava Philharmonic building should be completed in 2032. The cost of its construction is not entirely clear given the current situation. The latest estimates (from the end of last year) were CZK 6 billion. The city is trying to secure state participation in financing the project.