The expert committee together with the residents of Opava will decide on the form of the Upper Square

Prague/Opava – The development group Crestyl presented six architectural designs for the appearance of the Upper Square in Opava to the city of Opava on Monday, October 26, 2009, as a proposal for the development of the area of the current Slezanka. The designs were presented to a professional commission, which will select the best project in the coming weeks. Given the significant impact of this step on the future layout of the city center, the residents of Opava will also participate in the decision-making. They can examine individual proposals and vote for the best one at the City Information Center in Opava until November 12, every weekday from 8 AM to 6 PM.

"Because we have a significant investment plan in the city center that affects the appearance of the entire square, we approached the city of Opava with a proposal to develop variants of architectural design for the southwestern street front of Upper Square. We agreed that the solutions must be comprehensive and representative so that the square continues to fulfill the commercial and cultural functions that historically belong to the center of every city. The new appearance of the square must be functional and architecturally unique while maintaining the traditional structure of the city center. And of course, the selection of a suitable proposal must be objective and we need to have options to choose from – that is why we prepared a presentation of several proposals from different architects, which were presented to the professional commission," said Omar Koleilat, CEO of Crestyl.
"Given the significance of the square for the entire Opava, the city representatives suggested that residents should also vote on the variants of the solutions. Therefore, the city allowed us to place the proposals in the Information Center space, where every resident of Opava has the opportunity to express their views on the development of the square and cast their preferential vote. We believe that the proposals will resonate with the public and city representatives, and together we will create a representative and functional square that Opava deserves," The Crestyl group contacted a total of seven architectural offices and architects. These include both international architectural firms and local firms that have successfully completed projects. To ensure that neither the commission nor the residents are influenced in selecting the best proposal, all will remain anonymous until the winning proposal is announced. Ultimately, six offices submitted their proposals, which are presented only under the numbers 1 to 6. Each proposal was preceded by analyses that various studios conducted based on historical contexts and situations.
Through the presentation of proposals for the architectural design of Upper Square, Crestyl is responding to research conducted in the spring of this year, which indicated that 80% of people wish to architecturally modify Upper Square. As the main investor in the square area, Crestyl would like to contribute to the change through this step and discuss collaboration with the city of Opava.

The basic principles that the proposals must adhere to are as follows:


• the appearance of the entire area of the square must be addressed comprehensively,
• the symbolic and height impact of the former town hall and other surrounding high points should be considered,
• passages to the disappeared streets of Pivovarská and Radniční must be restored along with a complex street front,
• perspectives within the square and out of it must be created,
• green areas must be supported.

Selection of the winning proposal
The future appearance of the square will be decided by a professional commission together with the residents of Opava. For them, the city magistrate has opened spaces in the Information Center, where a public exhibition of all six proposals along with their descriptions will be opened tomorrow, and where it will be possible to study each proposal in detail on-site and cast a vote for one of the presented projects in the ballot box. The individual proposals will be exhibited from Friday, October 30, to November 12, every weekday from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM at the City Information Center in Opava, located right in the city center with an entrance from the back of the town hall opposite Slezanka. The room will be equipped with a voting box, which will be transferred to the commission after the exhibition ends, which will count the individual votes. Three selected participants in the voting will be rewarded with small prizes.
In the first round, the commission recommended four proposals, which, along with the proposal chosen by the residents of Opava, will advance to the second round, where the architects of the projects will be invited to present the project in their own words and provide additional information to the commission. The winning project will emerge from the final round of the competition as a proposal for the city of Opava for the comprehensive development of the southwestern street front of the square.
The qualified commission will include Ing. arch. Pavel Mališ – Deputy Mayor representing the city of Opava, Ing. arch. Zdeněk Bendík – City Architect, and Ing. arch. Lucie Langerová from the Heritage Department. The National Heritage Institute will be represented by its director Ing. arch. Naděžda Goryczková. The Crestyl group has chosen Ing. arch. Omar Koleilat and Ing. arch. Tomáš Klíma for the commission. External evaluators will be represented by Ing. arch. Martin Chválek – a member of the executive committee of the Chamber of Architects from Ostrava and Prof. Vladimír Šlapeta from the Faculty of Architecture in Brno.

Description of individual proposals

Proposal No. 1 follows the main pedestrian paths that mirror the original historical track of the streets Pivovarská and Radniční connecting the area with Popská street, respecting its arrangement and scale of the original historical construction of merchant houses in the square. The main goal is to diminish the large masses that may arise in the large area of the square, and therefore the facade is divided into three main smaller units separated by glassed passages, which soften the gables and arcades creating the main dominant of the entire structure. The left side evokes the shape of the gable of the merchant houses and the right side resembles the appearance of the Neo-Renaissance town hall, which was destroyed during the war. Thanks to the recessed facade at the theater, an open view to the church and theater from the square is created. The main facades combine structural plaster with brick, ceramics, and fully glazed structures at the passages, while the facade facing the Fish Market is subdued, highlighting the main historical dominants of the square – the co-cathedral and the theater.


Proposal No. 2 is based on the historical parceling and original roofing of street houses. The proposed buildings graduate towards the original town hall, with corner buildings rising at both ends of the southern facade of the square, creating an optical termination of views from Ostrožní Street and from the Fish Market. The Fish Market will retain its peaceful atmosphere, undisturbed by the noise from the main square, while the area between the town hall and the theater will serve as the main gathering place in the city center. The newly conceived street front, instead of the flat and low Slezanka, offers new visual stimuli created by the play of shadows falling on the porous stone cladding from travertine slabs. The entrance of the building from Radniční Street is formed as an entrance portal. The glass gate creates a characteristic point in the heart of the city. The glass cladding of the walls and ceilings will reflect the bustle in the square during the day and will radiate the inner life of the building into the surroundings in the evening.


Proposal No. 3 is based on the original historical parceling with the prominence of the historical town hall building, according to which the height division of the cornices is also designed. The facade facing the main square reminds of the dominance of the town hall and adopts a contemporary form using information technologies, where the area of the structure is divided into 8 screen surfaces utilizing multimedia elements. The screen areas can be used for presenting cultural events, the city, or for showing movies under the open sky. The facades are composed of clear and frosted glass along with concrete, natural stone, sandstone, illuminated surfaces of screens, and greenery, whose color changes with the seasons. Park terraces are placed toward the co-cathedral as a fifth facade, which will be visible from the surrounding buildings and Hláska.


Proposal No. 4 brings arcades along the entire facade to Upper Square, aiming to evoke the atmosphere of traditional squares enhanced by palace architecture with the prominent dominance of the town hall and theater. In a simple order, the individual arches of the arcade follow the original parceling of the merchant houses. The arch motif is also repeated in the floors but does not adhere to strict order, thus softening and disrupting the repetition. The arches at the ground level are open, while at the floors, the facade is ready for breaking with windows within the rhythm of the arches, which will open a pleasant visual contact with the square. The area of the facade creates fine reliefs reminiscent of stucco work.


Proposal No. 5 works with the segmentation of the southern front into individual objects at a scale corresponding to the historical segmentation. It recalls the dominance of the old town hall, the corner tower at the intersection of Ostrožná, opens a view to the co-cathedral, and emphasizes both passages of the proposed shopping center in the path of the original alleys. This proposal is based on three basic principles: establishment of the street line, which follows the existing street line of Slezanka and extends the square towards the theater and the cathedral; establishment of the height level, where the dominant remains as in the past at the site of the old town hall, at the corner of Ostrožná and the deepening of public space also near the cathedral.


Proposal No. 6 is composed of three separate blocks, which separate the former streets of Radniční and Pivovarská and also ensure entrances from Upper Square to the shopping center. In the ground floor of the new structure, along the entire length of Upper Square, there are individual shops with direct access from the square, reminiscent of the original luxurious shops of merchants. All three separate objects are connected both underground by a common parking level and further on the third above-ground floor. The fully glazed facade of the structure is designed in two colors, which alternate according to the historical parceling of the area. In each color of the individual parts, several shades of the given color are used, which are graphically arranged to evoke the layout of windows and solid surfaces of original merchant houses. The design allows the buildings of Hláska and the theater to continue to dominate Upper Square.

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About the CRESTYL Group
The developer of the project is the CRESTYL group. It has been operating in the Czech real estate market since 1996 and is one of the leading developers with a wide portfolio of residential and commercial projects. The CRESTYL group is currently actively engaged in the development of more than fourteen locations across the Czech Republic with a total investment value exceeding 1 billion EUR.