Arts Center - Urban Highway Transformation
Prague
Built in the 1970's in Prague, Czech Republic, the "Magistrala", a massive urban highway, crosses the historical center of the City. Our study of two neighborhoods Florenc and Těšnov, reveals that both sites are fragmented due to the urban furniture and the high flow of vehicles.
Trams, cars, buses, and trucks are creating an acoustic chaos highly unpleasant for the residents. The Magistrala, unaesthetic, massive, and noisy, cuts the two neighborhoods in the middle, neglecting the pedestrians.
Moreover, the disorganization between volumes, spaces, circulations, and functions creates a public space entirely used for transition and not for urban life. Our goal is to transform the Magistrala and reduce the surrounding noise through the redesigning of public spaces and traffic flows. We will finally add four programs, using the existing green spaces’ potential to give back the neighborhood to the pedestrians. These programs have a common goal: create a new place of meeting, culture, life, and entertainment which will reconnect the two parts of the city together.
Site Pictures
A thorough study and analysis of the site’s characteristics and circulations fluxes highlighted the necessity to transform this whole site threw an urbanistic and architectural project. Transforming and re-using existing infrastructures, recomposing circulation flows, creating a new hotspot in the city that fits the neighborhood’s needs, reducing noises, designing livable and friendly spaces with strong architecture, provided our team with multiple challenges.
The following illustrations, plans, sections, and 3D present our strategy to transform a section of this urban highway into an Arts Center and a park. These documents include new circulations and accesses, four buildings including a theater, flexible spaces, an exhibition space, shops, a media library, and an auditorium. The road of the Magistrala here becomes a large green roof offering a new garden to the inhabitants.
