Brno City Hall
team:
M2AU: Linda Obršálová, Norbert Obršál, Filip Musálek, David Helešic, Václav Mihola, Silvia Pajerová, Barbora Honsová, Alica Ondrušová
C+S architects: Maria Alessandra Segantini, Stefano Di Daniel, Saif Al Halabi, Barbara Marcuccio, Hagar Shoaib
client:
Municipality of Brno
typology:
theme:
About the Brno City Hall
The new building of the Brno City Municipality draws on the palace typology of the Brno Ringstrasse and maximizes the continuity of the urban green belt. The architecture responds sensitively to its context while retaining a distinct, memorable identity. At its heart, a generous covered atrium serves as the representative centerpiece of the institution. The design ensures intuitive navigation for the public, inviting workspaces for employees, and flexibility for evolving operational needs.
The design brief required a compact urban volume. The volume is progressively transformed by the trajectories, views, and movements that cross the site. As shown in the concept diagrams, the flow of people, the visual connection toward Brno’s historic centre, and the green corridors of the new park gradually erode and sculpt the initial mass into a smooth, organic form resembling a guitar pick. The building in this way starts playing the music of this part of the city, connecting history, the civic institution and nature. A central void is then carved from the volume, bringing daylight deep into the building and creating a civic heart around which public life unfolds.
The resulting building is both LAND-MARK and LAND-SCAPE. Its distinctive silhouette establishes a strong civic presence while maintaining a gentle relationship with the surrounding open space. The curved geometry softens the transition between architecture and nature, allowing the building to sit within the park as if shaped by the same environmental forces that define the site. The reference to Mies van der Rohe is subtle: is the idea that a building should be generated from experience, movement and light rather than from an image.