Will Prague’s long-awaited new concert hall strike the right balance between modernity and the city’s architectural history?
The winning design for the first concert hall in Prague in more than a century promises to bring a new cultural landmark to the banks of the Vltava.
This years-long project began in 2010 when Prague’s city council began preliminary studies. Seven years later the city approved the location in the Holesovice district as the site for the hall.
Building permits – a lengthy process for any large Czech construction project – are expected to be granted in 2026, with construction beginning in 2027, according to Eliska Markova, the project’s marketing and PR manager. Completion is set for 2033.
The estimated initial cost of 9.4 billion Czech crowns (375 million euros) has since risen to 11.65 billion. Other investments including further work on the surrounding area bring the total projected cost to 16.5 billion crowns.
Prague Mayor Bohuslav Svoboda has attributed the rise in construction costs to a combination of economic pressures, including inflation and increased prices for construction materials and energy.
Prague’s Symphonic History
The Vltava Philharmonic Hall will be the new home for the city’s two major orchestras, each now housed in remarkable buildings that are showing their age as venues for modern music-making.
After hosting Antonin Dvorak to conduct the first concert there in 1896, the Rudolfinum in Old Town housed the parliament of the independent Czechoslovak Republic from 1919 to 1939 and became the official home of the renowned Czech Philharmonic in 1946. The Smetana Hall in the ornate Art Nouveau Municipal House, home of the Prague Symphony Orchestra, also holds a notable place in history as the site of the Czechoslovak declaration of independence in 1918.
“The acoustics of Smetana Hall are not ideal for the large-scale symphonic repertoire,” Markova said. Dvorak Hall in the Rudolfinum is a superb room for chamber music, but it’s not large enough for large orchestral ensembles. “Problems arise at higher volumes,” she said.
“Both halls lack modern acoustic technology, larger capacities, and the necessary comfort for the audience and musicians.”
The Winning Design
Following an international architectural competition among 120 architectural firms from 25 countries, Prague announced the Danish Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) as the winner in May 2022. An expert jury gave BIG high marks for a design integrating the hall into its surroundings – or the surroundings as they should look after the hall and a massive urban redevelopment project nearby are complete.
BIG’s plan features ramp-like terraces and walkable roofs, providing public access and an integration of interior and exterior spaces. The firm’s founder and creative director, Bjarke Ingels, has written – on the studio’s website – about the way the hall’s concept draws inspiration from the riverside setting – “composed as a meandering journey from riverbank to rooftop.”
The main concert hall will seat 1,800 people. A smaller hall with 500-seat capacity and a mixed-use space able to accommodate up to 600 seated or 1,200 standing guests are also planned.
Where today busy roads, a railway viaduct, and litter-strewn empty spaces make a disorganized whole, with difficult access to the river for pedestrians, BIG’s design envisages a sweeping, multilevel riverside plaza and a large park-like space on the west side of the hall. Just north of the site, the entrance to the Vltavska metro station will be remodeled, and just beyond that is where the city plans a new development for 25,000 people on one of the city’s largest neglected brownfield sites.
Aesthetics: The Prague-Like Question
Prague boasts a grand cityscape marked by spellbinding architecture that crisscrosses numerous styles. The plans for the new hall have sparked discussion among those concerned with preserving the city’s identity.
The victorious design has met both enthusiastic support and some quibbling among Prague’s close-knit and often quarrelsome community of architects and preservationists, who argue over every detail of new projects in and around the historic center.
Members of the 125-year-old, influential Club for Old Prague have expressed mixed feelings over the concert hall. Writing in the club’s magazine, young architect Vojtech Ruzbatsky voiced his concerns over the degree to which the design is “Prague-like,” saying that Ingels’s ideas about urban revitalization are not unique to Prague and variants of them can be seen in other buildings all over the world, including some designed by BIG.
“Is [Ingels’s] explanation meaningful or banal?” Ruzbatsky wrote. “Are these kinds of stories important for visitors, [and] how will the hall itself survive without them?”
Club chairman Richard Biegel and vice-chairman Rostislav Svacha praised the design, noting that Prague has drawn architectural inspiration from other places throughout its history, rather than focusing on developing its own traditions, including St. Vitus Cathedral and the National Theater. Skillful integration of these buildings into the surrounding area contributed to their ultimate success, they wrote, voicing confidence in the winning design’s ability to do the same with the Vltava Philharmonic.
“We think that its sloping terraces or ramps can be considered a typical Prague motif,” Biegel and Svacha wrote. These elements intentionally echo the promenades from Petrin Park, near Prague Castle, to the Letna plain above the river, or from the castle to the Lesser Town, they added, “thanks to which the city can be seen from a slight height and from many different angles, and we can thus enjoy various views of its inner panorama.”
BIG’s Biggest
Some of the Danish architecture firm’s most acclaimed (or decried) projects:
VIA 57 West: One of BIG’s first major projects in the U.S. was this apartment building on West 57th Street in New York. 
CopenHill: This waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen doubles as a ski slope, hiking trail, and climbing wall. 
8 House: An apartment building in the Danish capital with a figure-8 shaped structure that hosts apartments, offices, and retail. 
National Theater of Albania: A major controversy erupted over the government’s plans to replace the aging national theater in downtown Tirana (shown here before its demolition in 2020). Bitter protests almost brought construction to a standstill, but the government says it will be finished this year.
Moving Forward
As the Vltava Philharmonic Hall progresses toward its next phase, the upcoming years will see the Vltavska area of Prague transformed.
Work is underway on a new train station just north of the concert hall, adjacent to the planned residential and commercial district. Two years ago a pedestrian footbridge opened, spanning the river between Holesovice and the fast-developing Karlin neighborhood to the south.
Despite optimism surrounding the project, questions remain about Prague’s track record with large-scale public developments, such as the handling of projects like the planned fourth metro line, slowed by legal questions over a major contractor’s winning bid. Mayor Svoboda emphasized the city’s commitment to transparency.
“I understand the skepticism, because Prague has indeed had some thornier projects, but that’s precisely why we’ve set up very strict supervision over implementation of this project,” Svoboda wrote by email. “We are convinced that the Philharmonic will become a positive example of how to manage such challenging projects.”
The cost of all this is already considerable and could rise further, judging from the experience of many high-profile cultural structures in Europe. Notoriously, the final price tag for Hamburg’s dazzling Elbphilharmonie rose many-fold to 860 million euros.
The Czech state will bear much of the cost – how much might depend on contributions from the public and business to a special concert hall fund that Prague’s city council approved by a slight majority in March. Asked by council members about the overall funding, Svoboda said the figure of 80 percent support from the state had been mentioned at his recent meeting with Finance Minister Zbynek Stanjura. Some council members questioned if this was too big a burden on the state budget.
As the project moves toward the building permit phase, its progress will be closely watched – not only for what it brings to Prague’s cultural scene, but also as a measure of how the city handles large-scale urban development in the years ahead.
Madeleine Long, a recent graduate of the University of Richmond, is an editorial intern at Transitions this spring.
