The 9th International Festival of Architecture and Urbanism Architecture Week Prague 2015 will take place in the Convent of St. George at the Prague Castle and other locations in Prague from August 17 to October 18, 2015. It is organized by the company Czech Architecture Week in cooperation with the Prague Castle Administration. The festival will again be held under the patronage of the Czech President, Mr. Miloš Zeman.
The exhibition Heritage of My Homeland, the main exposition of this year´s festival, will present not only the greatest architectural treasures of all regions, but also their culture, art and objects characteristic for individual regions.
1. The exhibition Heritage of My Homeland
“In connection with the fact that this year the regions will celebrate the 15th anniversary of their foundation, the organizers declared Heritage of My Region to be the leitmotiv of this year´s festival. The power of the exhibition consists in presenting the best of monuments, architecture, culture and history of each region, and thus the Praguers and visitors will be introduced to a variety of the known as well as lesser known sights and attractions throughout the Czech Republic. It has already become a tradition, that we are preparing the exhibition in cooperation with the Prague Castle Administration,“ says Ing. Petr Ivanov, director of the festival.
The exhibition Heritage of My Homeland is prepared by organizers in a close cooperation with individual regional authorities and also in cooperation with regional offices of the National Heritage Institute and a number of museums and galleries in the Czech Republic. Thus, each region will be presented by two architectonic models of historical buildings, a mosaic of period and contemporary photographs of interesting architectural objects, regional cultural events, sights from the point of view of tourism, a selected art piece, a large-sized photograph and an object characteristic for the region. The nature and cultural heritage of each region and its specifics will be presented via short videos on the screen, which will be included in the exposition.
Besides the exhibition Heritage of My Homeland in the Convent of St. George, the visitors can see more than 10 exhibitions organized within the festival.
2. The exhibition Bohemian Heritage
The exhibition is dealing with historical architecture of selected cities and towns in the Czech Republic (Prague, Brno, Hradec Králové, Pardubice, Chrudim, Olomouc, Ostrava, Lednice, Valtice, Kroměříž, Holašovice, Prague 1, Prague 5, Prague 6, Prague 7, etc.). Sacral Prague More space in the Convent of St. George is dedicated to a separated exposition of the capital city of Prague, an exhibition named Sacral Prague, which will present the Prague´s sacral architecture to its visitors. „Our aim is to present our capital city as a cosmopolitan place, which was an important cultural and religious crossroads of Europe,“ says Jiří Skalický, Director of the Department of Heritage Preservation of Prague City Hall.
Modern Brno and its famous villas
The exposition of Brno in the Convent of St. George will present the establishment of a modern city of Brno, dating back to as early as the 30´s of the 19th century, the period of an extensive redevelopment of the historical city centre. Between the world wars, a construction boom started in Brno. By significance, quantity and quality of the built objects, the period of 1919–1939 has not been surpassed up to now. After the foundation of the independent Czechoslovakia, the city has become an important economical and administrative centre. The seats of central administrative offices, political, scientific, cultural and educational institutions were built here. There appeared buildings that belong to the icons of Brno´s functionalism and European modern architecture in general. In the 20´s, the groundbreakers of modern architecture were giving lessons here – Le Corbusier, Amédéé Ozenfant, Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, Theo van Doesburg, Walter Gropius or Adolf Loos. At the turn of the 20´s and 30´s of the last century, construction of family houses reached its top and residential areas greatly expanded. The exhibition will present four family villas, representing exceptional moments in the field of residential construction: Löw-Beer Villa, Jurkovič Villa, Stiassni Villa and the most famous Tugendhat villa which was designed in 1928–1930 by an architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in 2001 it was included in the UNESCO List of the World Heritage Sites and now the villa is under the administration of the City of Brno as an installed monument of modern architecture.
3. The exhibition World Heritage
The exhibition World Heritage will present models of historical and architectural monuments and artefacts of selected countries (Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, Morocco, Poland, Slovakia, Serbia, Turkey, etc.) as a loose continuation of the exhibitions displayed in the Convent of St. George within the festival Architecture Week Prague last year.
4. The exhibition UNESCO Building Peace
The exhibition will display a unique presentation of WHC UNESCO, prepared on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of its founding. For the first time in the Czech Republic, the visitors will have an opportunity to see a maquette of the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, also called the “Accordion”, built in 1955-1958, designed with the participation of the architects Marcel Breuer, Bernard Zehrfuss and Pier Luigi Nervi. The publication UNESCO Building Peace, issued by WHC UNESCO on this occasion, will be presented within the exhibition as well.
5. The exhibition Places
The exhibition of modern architecture and urbanism titled Places will present models, photographs, graphical design and films about high-quality projects of architecture and urbanism, improving the places where they are located. They include such typologies as residential buildings, landscape architecture, cultural premises, multifunctional and commercial buildings, squares and parks. In this context, the “place” is to be understood as the space collectively inhabited by a community, mutually interconnected and intermixed. The places tend to be sustainable, incorporable and developed in accordance with the needs of the community. As regards the development, the very important issues include innovation, culture, monuments, sustainable development, aesthetics of the environment and uniqueness. A new architecture of the place is not focused only on a great design, but also on creating and improving the public space and interconnecting people with the places they are sharing. The exhibition is traditionally prepared in cooperation with a number of embassies and cultural institutes, and it will present objects from more than 30 countries of the world.
6. Playful Architect 2015
The 3rd international artistic-architectural project Playful Architect, organized within the festival, is intended for pupils of the third and the fourth grades of elementary schools and it is traditionally held under the patronage of Mrs Ivana Zemanová. The most beautiful art works by children will be exhibited in a separate exhibition in the Rosenberg Palace at the Prague Castle. The children from 18 other countries participated in this year´s project, such as Israel, Brazil or Italy, and so the visitors will have an opportunity to see architectural monuments from various corners of the world as perceived by children´s eyes. All the children will take a one-day trip to the Prague Castle, enjoying the prepared programme and art workshops in the Plečnik´s View in the Southern Gardens of the Prague Castle. As every year, other exhibitions, lectures and architectural walks around various sites in Prague will be organized within the festival.
For further information see www.architectureweek.cz and Facebook Architecture Week Praha.
Title
Architecture Week Prague 2015Website
Organizers
From
August 17, 2015 10:00 AMUntil
October 18, 2015 06:00 PMVenue
Convent of St. George, Prague CastleAddress
nám. U Svatého Jiří 33/5, 119 00 Praha