The Club for Old Prague awarded the new building at the automatic mills in Pardubice

Prague – The winner of the Club for Old Prague Award, which the Prague association awards to new buildings that blend well into the historical architecture, has been the central polytechnic workshops and gallery of the city of Pardubice designed by Šépka architects. The new building, which expands the original Winternitz Automatic Mills building by Josef Gočár, was designed by Jan Bárta, Marek Fischer, and Jan Šépka. The expert committee selected the winning building from six finalists. About the winner, who received the award yesterday in Prague, ČTK informed the executive of the Club for Old Prague, Lukáš Veverka.

Six buildings made it to the finals, alongside the Pardubice building, were a homestead in Dolní Miletín near Třeboň, the extension of the Faculty of Philosophy in Hradec Králové, a covered footbridge in Litomyšl, a drop-in club in Nová Paka, and an extension to the Red Church in Olomouc.

The Automatic Mills in Pardubice reopened after a reconstruction that cost over 900 million crowns at the end of September 2023. The site features two galleries, a café, an educational center for children and adults, a cultural center with a multifunctional hall, and a tourist information center, all housed in three buildings.

"Just as in all previous years, this group (of finalists) provides a compelling testimony that the topic of integrating new buildings into a historical context can have very diverse architectural solutions. And, as many times before, public buildings predominate, which serve society not only with their cultivated appearance but also with their beneficial purpose. The fluctuating level of contextual architecture in Prague is finally indicated by the fact that unlike several previous years of the Club for Old Prague Award, this year no new building from Prague appears in the finals," stated the chairman of the Club for Old Prague Award, Rostislav Švácha.

The club itself selects the award candidates and subsequently evaluates them with a council made up of representatives from various generations, from students to esteemed experts.

According to Švácha, the club evaluates buildings based on their quality and how they fit into their surroundings, but it is also crucial whether another valuable building had to be sacrificed for them. He noted that if a building has value, it should not be demolished. For this reason, for example, the new town hall in Lázně Bělohrad was excluded from the competition last year because it resulted in the demolition of a neo-Renaissance building. Today, the club at least awarded an honorary mention to its authors.

Last year, the award went to the municipal library in Šlapanice in the South Moravian Region, designed by architects Milan Podroužek, Martin Kubeš, Jaroslav Mareš, and Petr Buryška from the Archix studio. The association appreciated aspects such as how the building blended into the surroundings and that it contained classic village elements like gates in modern variations. The Club for Old Prague is a non-political civic association dedicated to the protection of monuments in Prague. The club monitors the changes in the city and comments on individual renovations or new constructions in the metropolis.