Instead of the bankrupt Galerie Liberec, students proposed new apartments

Winning proposal by Iveta Doležalová, student of FA VUT Brno

Liberec - Services, shops, and especially modern housing in green spaces or perhaps a student campus hidden in a green hill, such are the visions of architecture students for the use of the construction pit left over from the failed project of the ECE Projektmanagement shopping Gallery Liberec. The competition for the development of the two-year-unused site was announced by the investor, although he himself no longer intends to build there. Fourteen students participated, seven advanced to the finals. Today, the jury rewarded the three best proposals.
    The winner is sixth-year architecture student Iveta Doležalová, who was in Liberec for an internship at the time of the announcement. The jury appreciated not only the quality of the project and appropriately chosen construction program but also the elegance with which the author managed to deal with the disadvantageous north-facing orientation of the plot. "The orientation is not good for living, so I closed it off to the north with a building for services and shops, and to the south, it consists of green terraces with apartments that slope down to the pond," described the project the author. For her winning proposal, she received 60,000 crowns.
   "I want to buy a quality camera, and if there's anything left, I'll use it for traveling," Doležalová told ČTK, who is attracted by everything related to housing in architecture.
    However, the other awarded projects were also interesting. The second prize and 30,000 crowns went to Jiří Němeček, a student of Liberec architecture. "It connects well with the existing infrastructure, and we also appreciated its financial feasibility," said Jiří Suchomel, the faculty's deputy dean. The student filled the space with buildings offering services and apartments, linking it to the surrounding city.
    New streets on the site of the current pit were created by Pavel Deržmíšek, who received 15,000 crowns for third place. He filled the gap that formed in place of the former slope, even though not literally. Essentially, he fully developed the space to fill it, and six new streets create scars that disrupt the uniform slope. Along the streets are apartments, and within the blocks are parking and services. On the roof, which slopes towards Fügnerova street, there is a green park. "There would be a kind of student town there," described the young architect's intention. In the future, he would like to focus mainly on individual housing in the spirit of traditional architecture.
    The shopping gallery was supposed to be located across the street from the recently completed Forum shopping center by MULTI Development. The project, costing about 100 million euros (approximately 2.5 billion CZK), was also intended to solve transport issues in this part of the city. The roundabout near the center, which is already at its capacity limit, was to be replaced by a traffic-light-controlled intersection.
    The five-story building was to be embedded in the slope, and architects planned a park on its roof. It was to offer 35,000 square meters of commercial space and parking for 850 cars. However, the project failed, and ECE is suing the state. As compensation for the failed investment, they are demanding around 1.8 billion crowns (70 million euros). However, ECE will no longer build in Liberec; after the arbitration concludes, they want to sell the construction site. Josef Tobek, a managing director, told ČTK this earlier.