kruh podzim 2024 - Ton Muller a Štěpán Špoula

The last lecture evening from the series Kra/jiná will present the principles of transforming greenery in cities. How to ensure that the process is climatically functional, sustainable, feasible, and simultaneously supports biodiversity and is accepted by the public? This topic will be discussed by landscape architect Ton Muller, who has been leading the landscape department in Amsterdam for 25 years. In his practice, he experiments with various approaches to creating a quality green urban environment. His work involves everything from strategic planning to urban planting design. Ton Muller will present new projects in Amsterdam, such as rain gardens, urban parks, green infrastructure plans, residential projects, and street reconstructions. These projects illustrate the important role of plants for the cities of the future, taking into account their natural environment and the essence of trees and woody plants.

In the lecture titled Across Borders, landscape architect Štěpán Špoula will speak about his experience with urban projects and strategies focused on rivers, whose roles in cities have been gaining attention in recent years. The projects show that understanding their situation and solutions is only possible through constant “movement at the borders” of disciplines, sectors, administrative boundaries, perspectives, scales, and ways of thinking… The main guide in this unknown space is the landscape itself, attentive listening to natural processes, and the lived experiences and memories of people with specific places.

Ton Muller is a landscape architect overseeing the planting of greenery in a wide range of complex urban projects and also works as a teacher. His work is rooted in the Dutch tradition of floral design and planting in public spaces, while he is unafraid of innovative approaches based on habitats. He works with nature-oriented urban landscapes and draws from over 25 years of experience that connects urban planners, ecologists, and architects. His projects focus on topics such as biodiversity, urban climate, water management, health, and community building, where design, implementation, and maintenance play a key role.

Landscape architect Štěpán Špoula is one of the authors of award-winning projects, such as the Maxips Fík Waterfront in Kadaň (2012) and Loeschner Square in Kadaň (2015), and has a portfolio of various landscape and urban projects and studies. From 2013 to 2021, he worked at the Prague IPR, where he contributed to concepts and studies of public space and landscape. He was behind the first architectural competitions in the Czech Republic that were prepared as interactive competitive workshops or competition dialogues. He has long been addressing topics of suburban landscape development and green infrastructure and is one of the authors of the book Cities Upside Down (2020), which deals with the vague terrain of cities.

The lecture will be held in English.