The Olomouc City Council issued a building permit for the Central European Forum building

Olomouc - The Olomouc City Hall has issued a building permit for the long-prepared Central European Forum Olomouc (SEFO) building in the historic city center. The construction, featuring exhibition halls in the gap on Denisova Street, will showcase Central European visual arts. The project also includes the renovation of the neighboring building of the Museum of Art Olomouc (MUO). This information comes from a decision published on the city hall's official bulletin board. The management of MUO has chosen not to comment on the decision for now. In 2019, the government allocated approximately 600 million crowns for the construction of SEFO.

"We are waiting for the decision to become final; until then, we do not want to comment," said museum spokesman Tomáš Kasal to ČTK today. Appeals can be submitted within 15 days of delivery to the participants, as noted on the official bulletin board. MUO representatives previously stated that this is one of the most complex projects in the Czech cultural scene in decades.

The building, with two underground and three above-ground floors, will serve not only as an exhibition space but, due to unsuitable conditions, will house the library, study room, and archives, and underground repositories for art collections will be created. The project also includes an entrance hall and research rooms. The plan involves the modification of historical ramparts, conservation of medieval fortifications, and the demolition of several structures, including the old repository and boiler room.

The design work has been entrusted to the firm Šépka architects. The above-ground part of the SEFO building will be partly constructed using three-dimensional robotic printing from high-strength concrete mixtures, eliminating the need for formwork. The technology, according to architect Jan Šépka, will allow shaping the SEFO building according to the creators' vision. The construction contractor has not yet been selected, ČTK found out today.

The SEFO project has been planned in Olomouc for over ten years. The gap on Denisova Street, where five separate houses once stood, was proposed by Šépka to be filled with a concrete building of futuristic appearance as early as 2009. The unconventional form of the building within the city heritage reserve has elicited mixed reactions from the public. In September 2020, after long discussions, the then Minister of Culture Lubomír Zaorálek (ČSSD) approved the proposal. According to museum director Ondřej Zatloukal, the decisions were made for pragmatic, ideological, and conceptual reasons.

The building permit includes dozens of conditions for construction execution. They concern, for example, the protection of surrounding buildings, limiting dust and noise, water management, protection of engineering networks, and traffic organization during construction.

The foundation document for SEFO was signed by the Ministers of Culture of the Visegrad Group countries (V4 - Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary) in 2008. A year later, a research facility of the same name was established at MUO. In 2019, the Czech government included SEFO in the National Cultural Heritage Care program and allocated nearly 600 million crowns for its construction.