Beta Realities

Fenix Masterplan

Can an urban development contribute to environmental protection?

Beta Realities and Klaska Inc. reinvent one of Prague’s central industrial areas and transform it into a lively mixed-use quarter. Under the motto of a “phoenix rising from the ashes”, the Fenix masterplan proposes an innovative model of holistic living intertwined with collaborative work environments and recreational facilities activating the site’s largely untouched ecosystem.

The architecture answers to the site’s unique conditions in a carefully crafted and responsive way: due to its proximity to the Vltava river high flood levels the architectural intervention only touches the earth lightly and elevates all private residential and work areas to create a fully permeable public realm and meandering pathways through the buildings – their footprints being used as semi-open ‘social porches’ for neighbourhood and community activities.

Project Region

Europe

Project Period

2019

Location

Prague, Czech Republic

Team

Paul Clemens Bart, Marvin Bratke with Jan Klaska, Jakub Klaska, Gilles Retsin, Igor Pantic

Status

Competition finished

Programme

Residential, Mixed-Use, Refurbishment

Client

Confidential

Collaborators

Klaska Inc., Gilles Retsin Architecture

Size

23.300 m2

Visualisation

Chance CG

Community-based design.

Strongly defined by the voices of its community, the new Fenix neighbourhood is shaped by a strong sense for community, interactivity, connectedness, sustainability and program diversity to create an impactful identity around human centred design. his great mix of programs, promotes a live-work integration and forms an inviting gesture to all surrounding communities.

Diversity for lively neighborhoods.

A large variety in building typologies should foster the diversity of the newly invented mixed-use quarter. The buildings try to negotiate between public and private zones with their articulation in facade and volume. A continuous landscape is flowing through the whole quarter and connects all volumes in one coherent gesture.

Creating individual indentities.

Each townhouse is catered to the needs of their residents. In developing multiple adaptive facade kits, we are able to provide individuality and create identity for each building.

The community house as vital heart.

Communal centers are located in the restored factory buildings in the heart of the masterplan. What was once production now lives up to a vital community house, with flexible programming.