The competition at the stadium in Pardubice was won by the Franco-Czech team

Karel Řepa, summer stadium in Pardubice; source: fkpardubice.cz

Pardubice, November 8 (CTK) - The international competition for a new form of the athletic stadium at Pardubice Dukla was won by a Franco-Czech team of architects. The committee selected from 21 designs submitted by studios from 13 countries. The modernization of the facility may take decades and will cost nearly a billion crowns.

Architectural teams from Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, China, the USA, and Portugal participated in the competition. The committee assessed all the ideas as very high-quality, but the winner was chosen unanimously.

"Our calling card is a simple design, we fulfilled the brief in terms of operational parameters," said architect Aleš Marek, a member of the winning team, which was composed of the French Atelier CMJN in collaboration with the Czech studios AED project and Terra Florida.

The city wishes to build an athletics hall with a 200-meter oval and a minimum seating capacity of 500, a multifunctional sports hall for more than 2,500 spectators, a gymnastics gymnasium, halls for combat sports, a fitness center, and an indoor running track. Instead of an inflatable hall, a hall for ball sports will be constructed.

For the first phase, the city will need 292 million crowns. In the first phase, it plans to construct the athletics hall and a center for athletes that will connect to the existing basketball hall. The winner of the competition will spend about a year preparing the project documentation, while the city will work on the zoning decision for the entire area and the building permit for the first phase of construction.

"We will be intensely focused on securing funding. The project is operationally viable and can be financed in phases," said Deputy Mayor Jakub Rychtecký (ČSSD), who expects support from national subsidies and, for example, from the regional government.

According to architect Aleš Marek, construction could begin within four years. The site, established in 1959, covers an area of 80,000 square meters. Around 50 large events are held there annually, attracting about 30,000 athletes. However, they currently only utilize one-third of the entire stadium area. The new hall will improve the offerings, according to committee member and chairman of the Czech Athletic Union Libor Varhaník.

"The situation is very dire. We only have three 200-meter halls, two are in Prague and one in Ostrava," he said.

The architectural-urban planning competition was prepared by the city for two and a half years and was announced this April. It cost 2.8 million crowns, of which 900,000 crowns will be awarded to the winner of the competition. The public can view all the proposals at the Gallery of the City of Pardubice from Wednesday until November 20.

Information about the accompanying exhibition here.