Extension of the Slezská Ostrava Town Hall

Mirroring the historic town hall became the main compositional principle. Its basic volume and silhouette are projected into the new mass, but without adopting the historical ornament. The result is not a copy, but an abstracted imprint of the original building – its purist sister. The design thus works with a similarity that is evident in the proportions and overall massing, while allowing the new part its own temporal and material identity.

The design for the extension of the Slezská Ostrava Town Hall seeks to be neither invisible nor demonstratively different. It creates a recognisable contemporary layer whose legitimacy grows out of its direct relationship to the existing building. Mirroring is therefore not merely a formal gesture here. It is a way of preserving the continuity of the institution's meaning while acknowledging that its present form is being created in a different era, under different social, technological and operational conditions.

The historic town hall is not a closed artefact that can be approached only by protecting its immutability. It is a living public institution that must change in order to continue fulfilling its role.

We formulated the concept figuratively as a piece of music in three verses. Each represents a different layer of time, yet together they form a single whole.

The first verse is the historic town hall – a layer of the past, of craftsmanship and of civic dignity. Its architecture reflects the ability of public buildings of its time to express the identity of the municipality through firm composition, durable materials and detail. The new extension neither overwrites nor relativises this layer; it accepts it as the keynote of the entire composition.

The second verse represents the present. It takes the form of a mirrored mass that adopts the basic proportions of the historic building but strips them of decorative elements. Its expression is rational, calm and precise. It is here that the principle of the free replica is most evident: similarity is created not by reproducing detail, but by preserving the relationships between volume, silhouette and scale.

The third verse looks towards the future. It is lighter, more abstract and more changeable. Its character is defined above all by a cladding of Copilit channel glass, which does not dissolve the building into complete transparency, but works with diffused light, reflection and a changing expression over the course of the day. The material allows the new part to appear alternately as a solid volume, a light filter or an almost dematerialised layer.

The use of glass carries several layers of meaning in the design. From an operational and architectural point of view, it brings natural light deep into the floor plan and lightens the large volume of the office building. At the same time, it creates a clear distinction between the massive, ornamental and finely crafted historic building and the contemporary extension based on precision, light and changeability.

Here, however, transparency is not merely a material property of the facade. It is also a metaphor for how public administration should relate to its citizens. A town hall is not an ordinary office building. It is the physical representation of the relationship between local government and the community it serves. The openness of the new part therefore lies not in fully exposing the workspaces to view, but in the overall impression of an accessible institution whose contemporary expression reflects the principles of democratic and comprehensible governance.

This meaning is also reinforced by the way the two parts are connected. The historic building and the extension are linked by a bridge and a double-height entrance foyer. The connecting space is designed not as a technical corridor between two autonomous buildings, but as an interface in which the historic and new architecture can be perceived simultaneously. It is precisely here that the dialogue between old and new becomes an immediate spatial experience for the visitor.

Greenery is designed as an integral part of the architecture, creating a system of interconnected landscapes of differing character. The roof landscape draws inspiration from the open Czech countryside, with grasses, pines and stone elements reminiscent of rock outcrops.

The individual layers of greenery are not conceived as isolated elements, but as part of a single landscape concept that gives the building its own identity and brings a diverse natural environment into the densely built-up city centre.