The National Library is to pay the HŠH architects studio compensation for damages

Prague - The District Court for Prague 1 has upheld the architectural studio HŠH Architekti, which challenged the changes to the brief of the former competition for the new National Library building (NK). Thecourt acknowledged the arguments that the jury decided in favor of the design by Jan Kaplický in contradiction with the competition conditions, and ordered the library to pay compensation amounting to the difference between the second and third prize, namely 50,000 euros (1.293 million crowns).
The verdict is not final. The National Library will decide on further steps, including a possible appeal, only after receiving its written justification, said Irena Maňáková, the director of the NK communication department, to CTK today. According to her, the court did not sufficiently justify its decision from a legal standpoint and referred the participants in the dispute to its written version.
The HŠH Architekti studio was convinced that the National Library, through the jury and its representatives on the jury, did not evaluate the competition fairly. It stated that the conditions changed during the selection process. One of the conditions set before the first round of the competition required architects to place the National Conservation Fund above ground, which Kaplický did not fulfill with his so-called octopus design.
The studio filed a lawsuit as early as autumn 2007. Before that, the architects repeatedly turned to the Office for the Protection of Economic Competition, which repeatedly stated that it could not evaluate the design competition; it can only do so in the case of a competition announced according to the Public Procurement Act.
Kaplický's design won the architectural competition in March 2007, yet it was never realized. President Václav Klaus opposed it, joined mainly by politicians from Prague's ODS. Kaplický died suddenly in January 2009.