Prague, 15 January 2016 – This afternoon, the first round of the design contest for completion of the Campus Albertov was closed. 33 contest projects were sent by architectural firms and studios. Out of these, six will be chosen by an expert jury to continue on to the second round of the contest.
Before the meeting of the jury itself, all competition designs will be reviewed, i. e. assessed in terms of completeness and compliance with the contest rules. The assessment and evaluation will then be carried out by the expert jury from 22 January to 29 February 2016, when chosen contestants will receive an anonymous Invitation for Participation in the Second Round of the Design Contest, sent to them by a law firm. Final solution of the design of Biocenter and Globcenter buildings will be published in summer 2016, after completion of second round of the contest.
The number of submitted contest designs fully corresponds with difficulty of the assignment, which is the result of years-long thorough and systematic preparation.
“I am pleased with the interest of architectural firms to participate in the completion of the Campus Albertov. The Campus represents a very significant milestone for the development of science and research at Charles University. Thanks to it, the university will gain a modern university centre specialised in biomedicine, mathematics or global changes,” prof. Tomáš Zima, Rector of Charles University, stated.
The organiser of the design contest, Center for Central European Architecture, points out the extraordinary interest for this contest, not just among the national, but also international architectonic studios. “The Campus Albertov design contest demonstrates that an open design contest is the best way, how to find the highest quality solution for the design,” said Igor Kovačević on behalf of the contest organisers. Karin Grohmannová, examiner of the submitted contest designs, added: “We are delighted by the interest the design contest has gained. 190 entities have registered for the contest in total, out of which 59 came from abroad. This is a big surprise for us as well, since we did not expect the number of participants to be higher than 15% of the registered contestants, due to the level of difficulty of the program and assignment.”
Biocentre is financially supported by the National Restoration Plan; Investment identification number: Z332802000005.
