<MÍSTA PRO HRU> PLAY AREAS </MÍSTA PRO HRU>

conference accompanying the exhibition of the same name 
free entry, no registration required

Tomáš Černý – Rehwaldt Landscape Architects
Jos de Krieger – Blade-Made, Superuse
Ladislav Fuxa – hřiště.cz
Matěj Hájek – SKULL studio
Klára Koldová & Eduard Herrmann – Nami nami studio
Jiří Kotal – U / U studio
Jitka Ressová – ellement architects
Carolina Sidon – Adventure Playground
Richard Vodička – Pole designu
Dušan Záhoranský – AVU in Prague

In the last third of the past century, children's playgrounds began to emerge in our country with entertaining and often artistic elements, contributed to by artists and landscape architects (for example, Zdeněk Němeček, Olbram Zoubek, and Eva Kmentová in Prague, Kurt Gebauer in Ostrava, Miroslav Jirava in Krnov, Vladimír Sitta, Tamara Divišková, or Zdeněk Macháček in Brno, Roman Richtermoc and Oldřich Semrád in Hradec Králové). They were often isolated, but many of them became iconic and have recently undergone restoration, albeit under the new status of artwork rather than play elements. At the end of the 90s, there was a boom in standardized and not always creative, but especially materially or aesthetically uninteresting play elements. This average production prompted a reason to reassess the quality production from previous years and particularly among artist-parents, architects, and landscape architects, a strong need to change the situation emerged. A significant part of this is also attributed to successful examples of projects abroad, often signed by renowned authors and awarded in international architectural and urban competitions focusing on the revitalization of public spaces. The phenomenon of the Adventure playground (a concept of unfinished playgrounds that children build themselves under the supervision of instructors), which originated in Denmark in the 1940s and has become standard practice in Europe over the following eighty years, is also becoming known among Czech parents, educators, and local politicians. Numerous scientific playgrounds, educational-sporting elements in nature, of course, skateparks, and spaces for parkour are also emerging. Our selection of four dozen projects includes contemporary Czech and foreign examples, as well as older and still popular realizations, aiming to present the most diverse perspective on this topic. Therefore, there are projects bringing successful solutions for the revitalization of former mining areas, power plants, housing estates, abandoned parks, the dead space in front of schools, spaces under bridges, embankments, utilizing the roof of a parking garage, climbing frames, and entire sports, educational, or fairy tale areas in nature, urban and artistic transformations of parks, squares, or common sports grounds. The playgrounds in our selection have become places for the emergence of new community life, the establishment of a small sculpture museum, opportunities for engaging children of various ages in sporting, environmental, theatrical, or artistic activities. Meeting these projects and their creators has greatly inspired us, and we believe that their stories will inspire visitors and that the exhibition will contribute, at least in a small part, to positive transformations of play spaces.