Urban study of the location in the city center, which was created by the post-war demolition of most of the houses in the block. The proposed solution for the use of this area supports the life of the city center and heals scars from the war.
In order to find the right answer to this assignment, it is essential to answer the questions of what a lively city center actually is and by what means its liveliness can be achieved.
We consider a lively city to be full of people in houses, shops, in the public space of squares, streets, parks. A lively city is a place where the life of its inhabitants is present both day and night. The daily bustle followed by the quiet of the night, disturbed by the singing of regulars returning home here and there. It is not a lively city if you do not meet a living thing, nor if the city lives and pulsates during the day and then dies at night by emptiness and the absence of people.
In addition, a vibrant city center must have a strong enough centripetal force to attract people from its surroundings and, in the case of Opava, also from the region.
By what means can this be achieved, when the current experience of many cities is just the opposite, when shopping centers along their outskirts are causing the depopulation of the city centers and the quality of living in the center is not able to compete with the living in houses outside the city?
In our opinion, the solution must offer a reason to go to the city center, it must offer housing that is comparable to living in your own house and it must use the quality of the historic city center and the place itself. All of this needs to be put together as the answer to the conflicting wishes emerged from the surveys and interviews we have conducted.
We present a design that meets most of these wishes and combines them in the right way, so that a lively whole is created as a result.
On the one hand, we complete the block in its original outline with variation of different town houses. We then create a market in the courtyard and leave part of the existing park. The town houses facing the square and the market have a commercial parterre. The market can also serve as a city cultural hall, where it is possible to organize various types of cultural events.