Penta Real Estate and DBK Praha have put the fate of one of Prague’s most awkward sites open to an international design contest. The partners launched ‘Nová Budějárna’ this week, an eight-team urbanistic competition to redraw the fragmented territory wrapped around the Budějovická metro station in Prague 4. It’s a 4 ha area framed by the streets Budějovická, Olbrachtova, Poláčkova and Antala Staška. From an urban planning standpoint, what’s exciting is that the teams have been asked to test the potential for high-rise buildings under the new Metropolitan plan.
From a human standpoint, the exciting thing is that something will finally happen to improve on one of Prague 4’s key transit hubs. Tens of thousands of people flow through Budějovická daily, either transferring between buses and the metro system, or going to the offices and shops that have sprung up around it.
Still, for all that potential, no one goes to Budějovická just to hang out, and the reason is simple: it’s ugly. There are plenty of architecturally defensible buildings all around it, but the station itself is little more than a hole in the ground with some tired looking shops and pedestrian unfriendly staircases and walkways leading up to a surface level parking lot. As a result, the only people spending time in the public space around the station are the ones who missed their bus. Or else they’re unconscious.
Which is why it’s encouraging to see such a high-powered cohort of architectural studios invited to take part in the tender. Three Czech studios — A8000, Pavel Hnilička Architects+Planners and UNIT architekti — are up against five foreign ones: Denmark’s COBE, France’s Hamonic + Masson & Associés, Spain’s GINA Barcelona Architects, the Danish-German practice ADEPT, and Howells, a British-Irish studio.
The two-phase workshop carries the Czech Chamber of Architects’ endorsement. Only four of the teams will advance to the second round following the submission of first concepts at the end of summer. The winner is due to be announced by the end of 2026, with a view to construction beginning in 2029.
Its anchor is the DBK department store, Dům bytové kultury, which opened in 1981 to a Věra Machoninová design and a decade later housed the first IKEA in Czechoslovakia. DBK stays. The owners describe it as part of Budějovická’s identity, and the competition brief asks architects to weave the forty-year-old box into a new fabric rather than flatten it. The stated ambition is a lived-in district — housing as the dominant function, public space, greenery, and an enlarged retail offer — instead of a thoroughfare.
But what’s unlocked the new energy for investment is the impending exodus of Česká spořitelna, which is due to move to its new campus in Smichov City once completed sometime in 2028. The country’s biggest bank sold its three office buildings around Budějovická (BP Budějovická, BP Olbrachtova and BP Poláčkova) to Penta and DBK’s parent, MAT Corporation.
The partnership behind the competition is only months old: the two owners closed that joint acquisition in early 2026 and opened the design contest barely four months later. Penta’s David Musil has already named the former 1990s spořitelna headquarters on Olbrachtova as a candidate for a tower and pointed to the firm’s high-rise experience in Bratislava and London as the template. The developer’s case is simple: metro stations deserve the sort of high-density development that high-rises offer.
The jury is chaired by German architect Stefan Behnisch, alongside an independent panel that includes Lithuanian architect Gilma Teodora Gylytė and the Czechs Štěpán Valouch, urbanist Matyáš Sedlák and Cyril Pavlu. Representatives of the city, Prague 4 and the two investors fill out the rest, you’d assume to provide political cover for the result.
Also in ThePrime
Martin Baláž (Prologis): We can develop 180,000 sqm around Prague
Penta moves BASE flex offices to Chalupkova, hands Tepláreň coworking to Alto
