Arriving by car or public transport at Ruzyne Airport will gain a touch of exclusivity in the years to come. From afar, visitors will be greeted by magnificent glass buildings, which will shine like huge lanterns, especially in the dark.

They were designed by the world-famous Dutch office MVRDV, which won an international architectural competition, in collaboration with consulting firm Naco. Thus, Prague will get another contribution to its list of architectural gems of the contemporary world.

The project will expand Terminal 1 on the east side with two square-shaped buildings for security screening, commercial areas or VIP rooms. Across the street, in the public part of the airport, a wedge-shaped triangular building will be built featuring a hotel, conference center and covered parking lot.

“This competition attracted extraordinary interest from architects, including from abroad. “The centralized security control objects in Terminal 1, together with the solutions developed in part for the expansion of Terminal 2, will form the basis of a large-scale mosaic of strategically important projects to complete the increase in airport terminal capacity,” he explained. Jiří Kraus, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of Prague Airport.

The three buildings are designed in a uniform style and together will create a new entrance gateway to the airport, which will transform part of Aviatické Street into a representative thoroughfare. In addition to the panoramic glazing, which is expected to provide panoramic views from the interior to the surroundings, the facade will be covered with moldings with motifs of satellite images of the Czech landscape.

Typically for the creation of MVRDV, the edges between the transparent and closed parts of the facade will be “bitten” squarely, as if assembled from minecraft pixels or blocks. The spaces between the buildings will be surrounded by dense greenery represented by typical local natural species.

This place will be interesting for people arriving at the airport from the air, as well as for those leaving for departure. As architect Winy Maas, founding partner of MVRDV, said, most experiences in today’s modern airports are not tied to a place and are therefore unified. According to him, the situation in Prague will soon change.

The satellite imagery motif will also be repeated on the new building’s roof and interior ceilings. “As you pass through the guard, you will feel surrounded by the greenery of the Czech landscape – on the ceiling, which will reveal greenery, and in the surrounding courtyard, where there will be recognizable plants from the Czech biotope. “This experience gives you a sense of calm and control – the moment when you feel ‘grounded’, right before take-off,” explains architect Maas.

The three buildings are like “lanterns”, easily visible from the air and recognizable even in the light, then in his eyes were intended to guide people from afar when returning home.

The buildings are designed with sustainability principles in mind. Although concrete and steel are required for some structures, the floors will be light and hollow and supported by laminated wood beams. This will reduce the carbon footprint.

The glass printed on the facade will contain photovoltaics, which will generate some of the electricity for the building’s consumption. At the same time, the mold handles the shadows where necessary. The facade should also contain programmable lighting elements that allow information about current events to be posted on the building.

The two buildings in the terminal will be built in stages according to needs. They will receive a structure based on the table principle, with four supporting cores at the corners. This will support the entire span of the ceiling without needing to disturb the center with other supports. Thanks to this, the interiors will be very flexible and, in the future expansion of the airport, they can change their purpose, for example into a regular check-in area.

In addition to the green views, the fact that all services will be located on one floor should reduce passenger stress. When walking around the terminal, passengers can still see their destination – the airport area.

A third building with hotel and conference facilities will welcome visitors with an elegant entrance hall spanning five floors. It is located right at the end of a rather flat triangular structure, at the airport entrance.

The MVRDV office is known for its experimental architecture, which is anything but boring. He works with technically daring and seemingly impossible constructions and always surprises with something. The buildings are often childlike blocks, stacks of boxes, or from Minecraft, composed of pixels, appearing bitten, twisted, or glued together from a series of small houses.

Architects from MVRDV focused a lot on densifying cities and making life in them more pleasant by utilizing greenery, building communities and places for people to gather. Including what is called a vertical village in the form of high-rise buildings. They take inspiration from modular construction, Japanese metabolism, deconstructivism or postmodernism, but they have found their own style, which is clearly recognizable in most of the buildings.

The abbreviation MVRDV consists of the initial letters of the names of the three founders and partners – Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries. The team is based in Rotterdam, but also has offices in Paris, Berlin, New York and Shanghai.

This competition for the completion of Prague airport is not the first time this Dutch office has successfully participated in the Czech Republic. He reached the final with his proposal for the Vltava Philharmonic, which would ultimately be built according to the designs of the Danish studio Bjarke Ingels Group. It also advanced to the top five in the Vítězné náměstí fourth quadrant finishing competition in Prague, but Dutch-Czech teams Benthem Crouwel Architects and OVA won there this year in late September.

This text is part of the Česká elita project, in which Seznam Zprávy compiled a ranking of the 100 most valuable Czech companies. The project partners are: Prague Stock Exchange, Deloitte, Galileo, Kunsthalle, Mercedes-Benz and Orlen Unipetrol.