The Chamber of Architects authorized a record number of architectural competitions last year

Prague – According to the rules of the Czech Chamber of Architects (ČKA), 72 architectural competitions took place in the Czech Republic last year, which the chamber confirmed as regular. This is a record, 14 more than two years ago. Public investors announced 58 competitions and private investors announced 14. Since the establishment of the independent Czech Republic in 1993, the chamber has recorded 977 architectural competitions. ČTK informed about this in a press release on behalf of ČKA through spokeswomen Barbora Sedlářová.

Among public clients, municipalities and cities prevailed, accounting for 62 percent of all competitions last year, according to the ČKA working group. Of the state organizations, the Railway Administration held five competitions (seven percent) and the Administration of Prague Castle held two (three percent).

The share of private investors who decided to proceed through a regular architectural competition was 19 percent last year. An analysis by the ČKA working group, according to its member Tomáš Zdvihal, indicates that the main motivation for private investors to hold competitions is to obtain a quality project.

"Before 2011, there were about ten to twenty competitions announced each year. At that time, the ČKA began to significantly engage in the popularization of architectural competitions, which is why I am pleased that the number has increased almost sixfold over the last 15 years," said ČKA Vice Chairman Petr Lešek.

In the last decade, 509 competitions have taken place. "Since 1993, we have recorded 977 regular competitions, which means that this year we will most likely see the milestone one-thousandth competition," Zdvihal added.

Regarding implementations in 2025, like two years ago, landscape architecture and transformations of public spaces dominated. These include the Ruller Embankment in Brno, Komenského Park in Kolín, the waterfront and the surroundings of the Liberec Region headquarters. There was also a significant representation of educational buildings, mainly in the Central Bohemia Region, Prague 6, and Stará Plzeň.

An architectural competition led to the completion of the Horácká Multifunctional Arena in Jihlava last year. From the competition came the Czech pavilion built last year for the EXPO 2025 exhibition in Osaka, Japan. In Prague's Slivenec, a municipal hall with a library was built, and in Mělník, after 12 years, the council approved the zoning plan.

There are currently around 50 other projects under construction, some of which, according to Zdvihal, have had architectural competitions that ended more than 20 years ago. This includes the Moravian-Silesian Library in Ostrava, the reconstruction of Wenceslas Square in Prague, or the Údolní 53 area for the Brno University of Technology.

The rules for the regularity of competitions, initially overseen by the Architects' Association after the founding of the Czech Republic, evolved gradually. The ČKA created a competition code and revised it several times. Two years ago, ČKA concluded a memorandum with the National Heritage Institute to prepare architectural competitions. The involvement of a heritage conservation expert in the early phase of the competition, for example during the formulation of the task, is intended to obtain a clear statement from the institute. The goal is to avoid questioning the results of the competition, such as those faced by the competitions involving the Railway Administration for the ticket hall of Prague's main train station or for replacing the cultural heritage of the Vyšehrad Railway Bridge with a new construction.

Table of last year's architectural competitions by type

Type of competition	Number
Purely architectural	35
Architectural-urban	20
Architectural-artistic	5
Urban	4
Architectural-landscape	4
Architectural-urban-landscape	2
Architectural-structural	2

Source: ČKA