The Albertov campus will be built according to the winning design of the architects

Prague - The Albertov campus in Prague will be built according to the winning design from the architectural competition. After a negotiation procedure without publication, a contract was signed with the studio Znamení čtyř - architects for the creation of project documentation and engineering activities. Václav Hájek, spokesperson for Charles University, stated this today in response to a query from ČTK. The campus is the largest construction project of Charles University in the center of Prague in the last hundred years. It is expected to cost 2.5 billion crowns, and the construction will be financed from the state budget.

When the results of the architectural competition for the design of future scientific centers were announced last August, it was still unclear what the Biocentrum and Globcentrum would look like. The university also negotiated with the authors of the second proposal, which was created by the studio Atelier M1 architects.

In the end, they selected the winning design from the architectural competition. This will now be further developed into the form of tender documentation, and then the individual stages of project documentation will be processed and discussed with the relevant authorities. Construction is expected to start in January to February 2020. The centers should be operational from 2022, employing about 1,200 people.

Biocentrum and Globcentrum will serve as research facilities for the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Faculty of Science, and the 1st Faculty of Medicine of Charles University. Biocentrum will focus on understanding living systems for the needs of human health, new biotechnologies, and biodiversity protection. Research at Globcentrum will focus on various aspects of global changes. This includes, for example, the dynamics of global climate change, shifts in species distribution, natural threats and risks, as well as the dynamics of the spread of animal species and vegetation.

Atelier Znamení čtyř - architects was founded in 1999 by Juraj Matula, Richard Sidej, and Martin Tycar. They have a history of projects that involved connections to existing historical structures. For example, they proposed the reconstruction and extension of the synagogue in Smíchov or the historical rehabilitation and reconstruction of the Lesser Town Palace on Letenská Street for administrative purposes.