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CBRE Meeting Room of the Year 2017 has announced its finalists

• A record 94 companies have signed up for CBRE Meeting Room of the Year competition this year
• A record number of 42 finalists have been chosen by a professional jury led by Eva Jiřičná
• This year, companies can win in nine categories, newly in the Small Office category and Architectural Design, which is guaranteed by the Czech Technical University in Prague and evaluated in cooperation with the chairwoman of the jury Eva Jiřičná and its students 

CBRE, the world leader in commercial real estate, is holding the fourth-annual prestigious CBRE Meeting of the Year competition that evaluates the best offices in the Czech Republic. The professional jury comprised of Eva Jiřičná, Biljana Weber (Microsoft), Marie Passburg (Skanska), Richard Curran (CBRE), Tomáš Jindříšek (Dark Side), Jiří Tourek (Philips) and Pavel Maurer selected the finalists competing to win in four different categories, including Meeting Room of the Year, The Office as the DNA of the Company, Most Attractive Working Environment, and A Small Office. The winner of the Healthy Office category will be chosen by an expert jury from the Czech Green Building Council, the Future-Proof and Innovative Offices category by Skanska’s expert jury, the Smart Cooperation category by Microsoft’s expert jury and the Architectural Design category, whose professional guarantor is The Czech Technical University in Prague, will be chosen by students in cooperation with Eva Jiřičná, the chairwoman of the jury. This year, the general public can also vote in the public voting category at zasedackaroku.evropa2.cz. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in February 2018.

A record 94 companies entered the CBRE Competition in 2017. IT companies dominate, with 17 ranking among the finalists as well as other fields such as e-commerce, co-working centres, financial, media and marketing companies, businesses, law firms and manufacturing companies.

The companies in the finals are mainly based in Prague and Brno (Notino, Kiwi, Global IT Center, Line Control, Kreston A & CE Group, Content Agency, Phonexia, Red Hat Czech). There are also companies from other regions such as Tipsport (Beroun), De Heus (Bučovice, Vyškov), Sonnentor (Čejkovice, the Hodonín district), ABB (Jablonec nad Nisou), TESCO SW and Vault 42 (Olomouc) and ERA (Pardubice).

Petra Lávičková, Head of Marketing & PR at CBRE, who is the organiser of the CBRE Meeting Room of the Year, commented:

"This year is a record year in all respects, both in the number of registered companies and finalists in the competition, as well as in terms of the number of interesting projects in the regions. Personally, I can see that the quality and design of offices is not just the domain of large corporations but also smaller companies as well, so we have recently created the A Small Office category.”

The expert jury decided on the basis of evaluating criteria in terms of design, originality, innovation, practicality, attractiveness of the working environment for employees and personally visited several of the companies to reach a final decision on the final winners.

Eva Jiřičná, the world-famous architect and chairwoman of the CBRE Jury, added:

"Companies often do not realize what the main benefit of their office space is and where it is necessary to carefully consider which features or colours they use in the rooms. For example, light in the office is something that companies underestimate, even though light gives space a completely different dimension. But I am glad to see the efforts that Czech companies have taken to implement quality and comfortable offices, which I can see every year, not only in this competition.”

Among the finalists in the Architectural Design category are the studies Zuzana Bošková and Petr Láska (with a project for Avocode), Kaplan architects and Horalík atelier (CA Technologies), ZOAA (Heureka Shopping), YUAR (MSD), Mária Maninová, Petr Hanousek, Noro Gáfrik (Opero), Hezkey (Advisory Centres and MPSS Hypocentres) and No-A Architects/Vesper Frames (Sonnentor).