Archinect - News

Zaha Hadid Architects completes Prague high-rise development with cascading terraces

2023-12-20T11:53:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects has designed a high-rise building in the Czech Republic adjacent to one of Prague’s major railway stations. Named Masaryčka, the scheme has been envisioned as “a welcoming gateway to the city for suburban and domestic rail passengers as well as those using the express rail link that is currently under construction to Prague’s international airport.”

Image credit: BoysPlayNice

According to the architects, the complex’s form is designed to establish a dialogue with the architecture and urbanism of Prague’s Old Town. Containing office and retail uses, the 300,000-square-foot development incorporates seven stories within its eastern section and nine stories at its western end.

Image credit: BoysPlayNice

On the exterior, fins within the double-skin facade contribute to solar shading in the summer and “transform the project’s horizontal composition to the verticality of its western facade facing the spires of the Old Town.” A cascade of terraces divides the development...

The world's first 3D-printed parkour park is unveiled in Prague

2021-10-05T18:21:00-04:00

The world’s first 3D-printed parkour park was unveiled in Prague 11, a municipal district in Prague, Czech Republic.

The project was a joint endeavor between building society Stavební spořitelna České spořitelny (Buřinka), 3Deposition, and the Prague 11 municipality. It was designed by architect and vice chairman of the Czech Parkour Association Daniel Samek.

The park spans a diameter of 14 meters (46 feet) and contains 14 3D-printed elements connected by steel pipes. The elements were printed on a frame printer using recycled concrete, known as rebetong, by 3Deposition, a company founded by researchers from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Brno University of Technology. The printing, which took 10 hours, required 12.5 tons of special concrete mix from Master Builders Solutions CZ.

Aside from parkour training, the elements of the playground can also be used as an outdoor gym and are intended to be used by everyone starting at ten years old. As noted by Buřinka, the advant...

A rusty, post-apocalyptic shipwreck 'crashed' into a skyscraper could soon become Prague's tallest building

2019-09-25T14:42:00-04:00

A giant rusty shipwreck, its bow reaching for the sky, cuts through the main building. Plants growing out of the hull seem to symbolise man’s creation slowly being reclaimed by nature. According to Tomáš Císař, the lead architect of Black n´ Arch studio, which designed the structure, the building also serves as a pedestal for the ship.

While environmental activist Greta Thunberg reminded delegates at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York this week of our planet's dire future prospects, Czech developers Trigema have proposed a post-apocalyptic vision of an enormous rusty shipwreck sculpture leaning upright against, and seemingly crashing into, a high-rise building.

"This is something we wanted to do as a memento which connects art and architecture," Czech Radio quotes the designers, architects Black N' Arch in collaboration with sculptor David Černý, about the climate change-inspired Top Tower proposal which, if realized, could become the tallest building in the Czech Republic. "It is actually a post-apocalyptic message about what is happening around."

Looking back at SOFTlab's interactive “Iris” inside the Mirror Chapel in Prague

2018-11-06T13:33:00-05:00

Located within the intricate interiors of the Mirror Chapel in Prague, “Iris” is an interactive installation that New York-based design studio SOFTlab created for the city's 2018 Signal Festival, which took place last month.

Designed to blend the elements of light and sound, the circular installation has mirrors that rotate in response to movement and LED lights that respond to ambient sound.

Photo courtesy of Signal Festival.

“As the mirrors rotate, they open the perimeter allowing not only direct views of the Mirror Chapel, but also creating a ‘Mise en abyme’, mixing the surrounding chapel, viewers, and light in a vertically fragmented, recursive, and panoramic image,” SOFTlab describes.

Photo courtesy of Signal Festival.

The mirrors reflect both the Mirror Chapel's embellished surroundings while infinitely reflecting the viewer inside the installation's circular space. But when the viewer moves closer to the mirrors out of curiosity, they suddenly ...

A top-secret Czech bunker used by the Soviet army opens to the public

2013-08-27T15:34:00-04:00

A military bunker in Brdy that reportedly housed Soviet nuclear warheads during the years of the Cold War has been turned into an Atom Museum. It opened to the public last week attracting military buffs and historians from far and wide.

Building blocks to a new mass housing

2012-02-07T15:39:00-05:00

Goldhoorn’s concept, called Block City, proposes the introduction of a standard size urban block that — as with standard shoe sizing — won’t create standard architecture, but on the contrary, diversity. At the Jaroslav Fragner gallery in an exhibition bearing the concept’s name, Goldhoorn walks viewers through past and present mass housing to his future vision.

More info on the event page: Block City/ The Past, Present and Future of Mass housing

The exhibition is based on a fifteen-year research of Dutch architect Bart Goldhoorn into the possibilities of housing development in the future. His concept of the „Block City“ is a combination of analysed housing complexes of the 1960s and the 1970s as well as the contextual, individual, but also very expensive „Designer City“. Goldhoorn had the opportunity to test this concept in a new town for 40 000 inhabitants south of Moscow. The outcome of his endeavour are four master plans and 150 models of housing blocks created by architects from around the world which are part of a touring exhibition from 2011.
1/2 - 2/3/2012

Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle

2011-05-27T19:56:25-04:00

Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle will introduce to the city center an ephemeral artistic dwelling composed of thirty boxes, designed by Israeli architect Oren Sagiv and curated by Sodja Lotker. These boxes will be inhabited by performative projects realized and performed by scenographers, performers, choreographers, visual artists, film directors, drama theatres, installation artists, fashion designers, writers, and painters, etc... including Anna Viebrock, Romeo Castellucci, Harun Farocki, Markus Schinwald, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Josef Nadj….

The project is a part of the next Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, the world´s largest performance design event held in Prague once every four years. More on www.pq.cz.

Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle, currently under construction, will open in the city centre of Prague from June 16-26, 2011.

Technically beautiful

2011-05-05T19:23:57-04:00

Even in the most turbulent eras, intelligence and clarity sometimes win out over chaos, a fact evident in the work of the Engineers and Architects Association of Liberec (SIAL), a small but vitally important architecture studio that opened under communism.