At present, landscape architecture in the Czech Republic is not afforded the kind of attention and space that it undoubtedly deserves. The main idea behind the Landscape Festival is to increase awareness of the scope, significance and meaning of landscape architecture in its relationship to contemporary architecture, art and public spaces. The Landscape Festival seeks to publicise and to educate, including by cultivating pan-disciplinary dialogue between Czech and international experts, artists, public leaders, and the wider public
The ninth annual Landscape Festival will take place in the north-eastern Czech town of Krnov. This is the third time that the event has taken place in the Moravian-Silesian Region. The festival route will guide visitors to Krnov through a large variety of parks and other urban greenery, emphasising their architectural, landscaping, natural and recreational potential. Aside from Krnov’s historical centre, the route will also include sports grounds in Sokolovna, the town’s riverbanks, the Sídliště pod Cvilínem residential complex, and the peak of Cvilín hill.
The festival will emphasise the importance of urban public spaces and greenery via a number of architectural interventions, art installations, exhibitions, debates and public happenings. It will also identify degraded and contentious urban spaces, which offer the potential of being transformed into new hubs of cultural and social activities. Through site-specific installations and happenings, such locations then seek to revive, cultivate and predict future developments in the field. In so doing, a search for the very identities of these locations occurs – a reaction to inherent challenges, and an underscoring of their local value.
Starting out in and around Prague’s Galerie Jaroslava Fragnera in 2013, the subsequent two annual Landscape Festivals took place at the Praha-Žižkov freight railway station. The following year, in 2016, the event was held in the Silesian town of Opava. In 2017, the festival shifted to the opposite end of the country, and was held in the western city of Plzen, returning again to Prague in 2018 for its jubilee year. In 2019, the Landscape Festival again travelled east, being held in the city of Ostrava. And in 2020, the festival was again held in Prague’s Žižkov district. Which means that this year it’s time to head east again to Silesia! The wider aim of the Landscape Festival and its pan-Czech adventures is not merely to seek out fresh settings, but also to serve as an ambassador for the issue of landscape architecture and public space art in large cities and small towns alike.
The festival organiser is Galerie Jaroslava Fragnera, operated by the Architectura association. For more information, please visit www.gjf.cz.