Results of the competition for the second tower of the Plzeň Cathedral

Public single-round conceptual architectural competition
Organizer: CROSSCAFE ORIGINAL s.r.o.
The subject of the competition was the development of an architectural design for the construction of a second tower to the St. Bartolomew's Cathedral in Plzeň.
Competition date: April 12 – September 15, 2012
Jury: Eva Jiřičná, David Vávra, Ondřej Císler, Jiří Boudník, Jan Janák; substitutes: David Růžička, Petr Klíma, Luboš Martínek, Jaroslav Bláha
Number of submitted designs: 137
Total prizes and awards: CZK 89,515 and Benefit Crosscafe

1st prize (CZK 52,015 + Benefit Crosscafe) – Vladimír Heiser
Jury evaluation: A slender golden tower, which despite being taller than the current one, is not bigger, bulkier, or more dominant. It pairs well with the old tower. It respects everything original while adding a completely new dimension to the cathedral. The design appealed to the jury mainly for its simple elegance and well-thought-out solution. The panorama of Plzeň, which the city's residents cherish, would not be disrupted by the second slender tower; rather, it would enliven it and make it more interesting and dynamic.

2nd prize (CZK 25,000 + Benefit Crosscafe) – Bc. Robert Gallo, MgA. Václav Kočí, Ph.D.
Jury evaluation: The design addresses the question of duality. The author placed the second tower outside the layout of the cathedral into the vast Plzeň square, where the horizontal and size of this thin vertical solitary campanile (the design includes a bell in the tower's structure) is balanced. The tower, as a black metal lighthouse, anchors not only the ship of the nearby cathedral but also calms the stone sea of the square. The authors speak of the main theme of opposition, the feminine horizontal yin balancing the male ray of yang. It is remarkable that the mere 12-meter distance of the tower from the cathedral creates sufficient tension between the original and new building and generates interesting views of this ensemble from all sides. The existing gray stone temple mass is successfully contrasted with the black metal skin of the thin tower, perforated by a grid of crosses.

3rd prize (CZK 12,500 + Benefit CrossCafe) – Elena Machin Garijo, Ing. arch. Štěpán Martinovský
Jury evaluation: The design elevates the very process of completing the cathedral as its main motif. Individual floors added gradually based on a pattern generated by the variable occurrence of the feast of St. Bartolomew in the calendar have different heights and ages. The resulting architectural structure slowly grows into its final shape over one hundred and six years. The principle allows for the adoption of various technologies and construction systems of the future. The author draws inspiration from the constant unfinished nature of any significant architecture. The jury appreciates the grand temporal dimension of the design.

Award (Benefit Crosscafe) – Radek Toman, Ada Žabčíková
Jury evaluation: The design presents a striking mass solution, characterized by the clear symbolic form of the cross, reflecting the effort to find a convincing contemporary expression. The strong and clear shape of the mass "tower" does not correspond to its less daring height, which detracts from the overall convincingness of the design.

Award (Benefit Crosscafe) – Martin Bělkovský
Jury evaluation: The conceptually oriented design is a dialogue between day and night, the real and the unreal unconstructed tower, between building and shadow. While during the day, the actual shadow of the tower moves in part of the square towards the town hall, in the evening, the circle is closed by the shadow on the other side. The jury appreciated the well-executed intention to demonstrate that even an immaterial solution can evoke the accidental incompletion of historical development.

Award (Benefit Crosscafe) – UNDER-CONSTRUCTION ARCHITECTS s. r. o./ Ing. arch. Vladimír Vašut, MgA. Viktor Vlach, Ing. arch. Erika Vašutová, Maria Giovanna Drago
Jury evaluation: The design is purely conceptual and does not even assume that it could be evaluated within the limits of reality. However, the design could serve as an ideological basis for one of the future designs, based on an internal experience of perceiving a spatial culmination oriented upwards to a certain immaterial place in space, in infinity, symbolically defined in our imagination by the shape of a "heavenly vanishing point".

Award (Benefit Crosscafe) – Ondřej Zdvomka
Jury evaluation: As the only one among all the competition designs, it does not add, as is the age-old desire of most architects, but subtracts. It leaves the silhouette of the cathedral as it has remained to this day, merely removing the provisional shed roof and replacing it with a resting terrace for the churchwarden, where a bench and a pigeon loft are placed. The withdrawn life of the individual thus flows quietly above the bustling movement of the square and serves as a modest inspirational message for contemporary society, which has an irresistible urge to crush everything with unobtrusive structures of ephemeral random taste. This subtracting idea also presents the view that we should wait for the second tower until our art and culture reach the right maturity.

Recommendation for realization in 2015 – Kateřina Frejlachová, Martin Špičák
Jury evaluation: Both during the construction of the cathedral and in today's time, the completion of the church tower represents a complex resolution of the problems related to this undertaking, including both aesthetic as well as practical and economic considerations. The question of what the cathedral would look like if the construction had not been interrupted is as urgent today as it was in the past, and it is a pressing, painful, and provocative one. The design offers an immediate answer with the imaginative placement of mirrors, in which the vision of the completed cathedral appears as a result of an optical illusion to the viewer briefly, yet convincingly. The jury supports the realization of this project during the year 2015 as a symbolic promise to keep the idea of completing the cathedral alive and to dedicate all efforts towards its realization.

More information: www.crosscafe.cz and www.zijinak.cz