Return Black Meadow Cluster

 

On 1 February 2010 the city of Ostrava announced an international public combined urban planning competition to design the revitalization of the grounds of Black Meadow (Černá Louka). The task of the competition was to draw up a proposal for the spatial and functional concept for Black Meadow. The competition, whose deadline for proposals was 31 May, was not concerned with the form of individual structures, but rather it concerned the use of the entire grounds. The future cluster should integrate the existing buildings into a functional whole, reconstruct unused and neglected buildings, and supplement them with new and needed structures serving cultural and educational purposes as well as housing.

A total of 70 architecture studios registered for the competition. Among the international participants were Foreign Office Architects (Great Britain), Maxwan (the Netherlands), NL Architects (the Netherlands) and Lacaton & Vassal Architects (France). On 18 June an eleven-member jury composed of renowned urban planners, architects and representatives of the city of Ostrava and headed by the architect Josef Pleskot decided by a majority of votes that the winning design would be that of the Dutch studio Maxwan.

As jury chairman Pleskot stated, the winning design is noteworthy for its architectural and urban design treatment of the space, which does not emphasis the individual buildings but the overall space. "This design impressed an overwhelming majority of the jury, because it radiates an undeniable allure. It is a terribly interesting conception of a specific and original urban space, which Black Meadow truly is, even if it on the face of it doesn't seem to be. This design managed to put its finger on its essence on this forgotten space which lies between the city and nature. It managed to connect nature to the city, and the city to nature," Pleskot said in extolling the merits of the winning project.

The individual buildings planned for the Black Meadow site include a concert house, an exhibition hall (Kunsthalle), a centre for modern music (Music Pavilion), a complex of schools from preschool, primary and secondary schools to a creative incubator combined with a school of arts management, and residential buildings. In the design by Maxwan these buildings are composed into a sort a semicircle, which is reminiscent of a colonnade or a town in the Wild West. The rest of the space is set aside for a park for the 21st century, as Pleskot called it. "It isn't like an English park, that is open nature, nor is it an imitation of a geometrized French park, but both of these types of park of suggested in it to a certain degree. It has a whole range of elements for play, for encounters, and there is a definite accessibility or flow in all directions," Pleskot said.

According to the director of the Ostrava 2015 project, Čestmír Kopecký, the results of the urban design contest is a crucial step for Ostrava to succeed in the competition for the title of European Capital of Culture. "For me personally, it is a great satisfaction. One of the fundamental principles of the candidacy project is realistic idealism. And this design is something so beautiful that if it is implemented it will give our work great meaning," Kopecký stated.

For its winning design, the Maxwan studio will receive an honorarium in the amount of 900 000 Kč (around 35 000 euros). In second place was the design prepared by the architects Jiří Buček, Jiří Chmelík, Jan Kadlas and Pavel Šťastný from Liberec, which carries an award of 500 000 Kč. In third place was the design by the American-Slovak architectural team of Peter Stec, Brian Tabolt, James Lowder and Peter Stec Sr. The jury also awarded two special prizes in the amount of 62 500 Kč to a collective of architects composed of Josef Kostka (Havířov), Marcin Jojko, Bartlomiej Nawrocki, Krzystov Czech and Grzegorz Ostrowski and to the Dutch studio NL architects.  All the registered designs will be presented to the public in the course of July. The announcement of a competition for the first structure of the cluster - the concert hall - is planned for the autumn 2010.

The Rotterdam-based Maxwan Architects + Urbanists studio was founded in 1994. Its first commission and also implementation was the master plan for the newly established Dutch city Leidsche Rijn (on the outskirts of Utrecht). Today, 75 000 people live there. In 2004, the director of Maxwan, Rients Dijkstra, was named as one of the advisers to the mayor of London for a new urban development plan. In 2003, the studio began designing the new urban district Barking Reach (with 10 800 residential units) on the eastern edge of London. It is currently under construction. Maxwan has won many urban design competitions (in Moscow, Kaunas, Kiev, Antwerp).

See the visualizations of the winning project on the Maxwan website.

For all the awarded designs, see here.

All designs submitted to the urban planning competition to revitalize the Black Meadow site in Ostrava can be viewed between14 and 17 October 2010 as part of the "House and Flat" exhibition at the Výstaviště exhibition grounds in Ostrava. A catalogue for the exhibition will be printed.