Jakub Klimeš

Project agenda

The project investigates into landscape not simply as an object to be seen but as an instrument of power.

The idea of the city composed from series of objects which give form to collective rituals rather that a city controlled by a grid that regulates economic development - in this case constructed by landscape.

Study of two precedent cases, Circo Massimo in Rome as a representative of Roman arch-type which used to be the largest chariot racing arena in the world but mainly an example of architecture which through time translated it self into a landscape and informed the architectural/landscape language of the project. Second precedent is an example of radical architecture represented by series of drawings by Czech artist František Lesák, depicting how human kind organises and formalises landscape/nature which the project design interventions sourced from, in terms of insertions of architectural elements in the ground and organisation of the site grounds.

Research was formed into an archive investigating into the relationship between manmade landscape and natural environment, the archive defined the design outlines - interest in the collective rituals of landscape and the political dimension that landscape can have.

The archive also defined the design decisions in terms of the horizon line created by modern architecture that frames nature which then becomes landscape - creations of views which frame the city. And tension between architecture landscape, where one tries to dominate the other or is in harmony with each other - objects which either blends in the landscape or seem as they were drop from the sky.

The project locations is in Prague (the Czech Republic) in a site which has an incredible history of manifestation of power through the manipulation of landscape.

The design and the organisation of the site was influenced by the historical layering of the site, the political manipulation of the landscape.

A high belvedere walk as a new horizon for the city of Prague and it’s people, sourcing from the historical layer of the site for the park for the crown prince Rudolf in 1885.

Radical cuts in the landscape creating new communication links between the old town and the new town but also the idea of the horizon line framing the views of the city sourced from the clearance master plan of the city designed in 1907.

The collective ritual of sport activity defining the new sport grounds which preserves the site from future development but also offers multi-functionality to the site sourced from the arrangement of sport courts at the site from the beginning of the 20th century but also the Circo Massimo as the original studied precedent case, a translation of architecture (sport court) into landscape.

The stripping of the Stalin monument as the symbolic act of de-construction of the political power from the landscape and the usage of the hidden inside concrete structure as a pavilion merged with the surrounding landscape sourcing the historical layer of the communist power of the landscape that was depicted by the construction of Stalin monument at the site in 1955 and later destroyed in 1962 as a part of de-Stalinization process.The pedestal was re-appropriated in the past several times, as a stand to a bell announcing the end of the velvet revolution in Prague in 1989, as the pedestal for the Michael Jackson statue in 1996 or as a pedestal to the democratic election campaign in 2006.

The proposal has the ambition to rethink the idea of a park located in the centre of the city as a model for the city rather as an element opposed to the city. The collective ritual of sport to be seen as one of a series of objects which operate in a relationship with the city and which would create a new economical infrastructure for the city challenging the traditional system where the city economic development is regulated by a system of a grid.