Cycle Path

Year2024

CategoryProjects

LocationLoučovice

StatusCompleted

The cycle path between Loučovice and Vyšší Brod is created by adapting existing technical infrastructure in the landscape. The route uses the body of the original Spiro Canal, which historically served the paper mill, and works with its structure, alignment and relationship to the surrounding area. The design therefore does not create a new trace, but transforms an existing element and integrates it into the contemporary system of pedestrian and cycling mobility.

The basic principle is to make the most of what already exists on site – with minimal construction intervention, preserving the authenticity of materials and working sensitively with views, terrain and vegetation in the valley of the Čertovy proudy rapids.

The project combines a transport function, technical heritage and landscape context, and presents sustainability as the ability to transform existing structures rather than replace them with new ones.

Client	South Bohemian Region
Design team	Martin Krupauer Pavel Kvintus (A8000 architects) Ondřej Zenkl (transport engineer, Zenkl CB)
Award	Award for a Sensitive and Exceptional Landscape Revitalisation (Building of the Year for Transport and Technical Infrastructure)

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Minimal Intervention

Intervention in the original body of the canal was deliberately kept to the essential minimum. The structure was cleaned and opened up in one section to reveal views into the green valley of the Čertovy proudy rapids.

The originally enclosed technical structure thus becomes an open line in the landscape. The shape of the path does not arise as a formal gesture, but derives directly from the existing structure and its course. Here, architecture does not impose a new form, but rather removes the superfluous and allows what was already on site to stand out.

Time as Part of Architecture

The concrete body retains its rawness, imperfection and traces of ageing. The surface is not seen as something that must constantly be returned to a perfectly clean state, but as a material that changes naturally with the weather, use and surrounding vegetation. The project thus accepts time and entropy as part of the final image.

It is not an attempt to create a new aesthetic object, but a search for the right degree of intervention – one that respects the history of the place, its technical character and the present-day landscape.