<translation>Ještěd in the Cage 17 - Awarded Studios and Projects</translation>

The Studio of Karolina Jirkalová and Jakub Chuchlík
An adventurous architectural travelogue by the guest studio of Karolina Jirkalová and Jakub Chuchlík. A choice for those who want to look at architectural creation from multiple angles.

Assignment:
Instead of one comprehensive semester assignment, we offer an adventurous stage game, composed of weekly and biweekly tasks. Each assignment will be a surprise, and its resolution an important part of the journey through the semester. We will alternate mediums, genres, and perspectives. We will draw and write, create and reflect. The result of each student's work will be a richly illustrated travelogue, whose story begins at the door of a house in Liberec and unfolds somewhere towards Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

Rules of the journey:
* the journey is defined by tasks
* the length of each task is one, two, or a maximum of three weeks, depending on its difficulty
* everyone must go through all tasks
* main consultations – assignment and submission of tasks – are collective
* all tasks are submitted in A4 format
* no one knows what the next step will be
* a draw will decide who continues on whose work
* there is no way back

students: Mirka Baklíková, Sára Brandová, Michala Kohoutková, Kristýna Mocová, Alžběta Nováková, Adéla Pečlová, Michaela Říhová, Barbora Tauerová
more at: http://jirkalova-chuchlik.blogspot.cz/
flip through: https://issuu.com/cestadoneznama

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The Studio of Petr Stolín and Alena Mičeková
The guiding motif of the winter semester is Agent 007! We often find ourselves in situations required by our profession that demand the ability to react to unexpected and non-standard situations, concentration on very quick decisions, and managing many tasks in extremely short time. And all this with the elegance of James Bond. Therefore, we have approached teaching as a training mission for new agents!

Main themes
Does James even have a home? What is Bond really like in private? And where should it be??? Such questions and more were pondered by students seeking answers to this assignment. Here, we wanted to allow for an approach that defies all conventions – a space without borders and limits, a space for absolutely free thought and invention! You never know what tasks you will have to face in the future.

Short tasks
We structured the initial acquaintance with the students' work as short “military” exercises. It was necessary and inevitable to practice the basic disciplines of an architect's creation in order to proceed further in the work, continuously improving in them so that everything gets under your skin. Agility, systematic work, and inventiveness are essential! With each new task, the architect returns to the beginning but can leverage his acquired experience and solve tasks much faster.

We like to say that the architect is a “universal soldier.” His education should be a cross-section of all fields. And here is a chance to create ideal spaces for their teaching. Older agents will participate in an international student competition announced by the Technical University in Dresden with their results.

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Alice Mitysková: Oasis
Studio of Jiří Klokočka, Department of Urbanism FUA TUL

Lively structures, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (-22.987714, -43.252094)
In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of slums. Nearly a billion people around the world live in slums. Rio is estimated to have 6 million residents, with about a third living in several hundred favelas. In all of Brazil, there are about six thousand slums. There are several problems that slums and favelas suffer from worldwide. 1/ Lack of open space and maintained, reinforced pathways. 2/ This problem is also linked to insufficient public infrastructure. Due to the narrow streets, emergency services or fire trucks cannot access the area. 2/ Illegal electricity connections create dangerous clusters of high-voltage wires. 3/ Irregular supply of drinking water. Rainwater reservoirs placed on rooftops serve as emergency solutions. 4/ Lack of waste collection systems and inadequate quality and capacity of the sewage network. 5/ Public amenities. The climate in Brazil can be described as tropical. Average annual temperatures reach 22°C. It is like in a greenhouse. Stuffy heat and bright sun alternate with heavy rain.

I would like to improve and generally elevate the living standards of favela residents with a view to the near future. I strive for a gradual creation of self-sufficient areas and a system that flexibly encompasses the needs of favelas and slums worldwide. A system that adjusts to the social typology, needs, and landscape characteristics according to its shape, material, and composition of associated buildings.

My proposal consists of two phases. The first is to free the most densely populated parts of the favela by demolishing a small percentage of their buildings. This will create open space flowing through the impenetrable blocks, creating “small squares” throughout the favela. The second part involves placing a subtle structure above the created open space.

I deliberately chose a circular shape for Rocinha due to its great compactness and the lack of public services in areas outside the main communication routes. I am creating a ring-shaped open space where there is an access road and a pedestrian promenade with space for market stalls. Above this space is a slender concrete structure supported by slender steel columns. The entire lower space is thus covered and protected from the sharp sun and rain. Both levels differ from each other. The lower part is at ground level, flattened into a smooth road. The second level disappears into the nests of small residential blocks and sometimes emerges above their roofs. It has a cascading character with stairs and ramps. There are places for fruit and vegetable markets, seating with views, or sports fields. The platform also has unobstructed views of the hustle and bustle below. Newly planted trees grow through some of them.

The ring focuses commerce and services. This longitudinal square generally serves as a communication route and pedestrian zone with areas for free movement of people and markets. This event is amplified by new buildings with a diverse range of uses, which are adjacent to the ring. A vertical green farm, a cable car for easier transportation and supply of the upper parts of the favela, a building with an integrated rescue system, post office, educational institutions, and public administration. There are also large water tanks distributed at public access according to their needs. All new objects are equipped with solar panels and small wind turbines to provide electricity for themselves and their surroundings.

The entire structure aims not only to improve the living standards of favela residents but also to attract tourists and with them, capital.

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Jakub Kopecký: New Urban Neighborhood in Náchod / From Whole to Detail
Diploma thesis ZS 2016/2017 in the studio of Radek Suchánek and Petr Janoš

Introduction
The city of Náchod has long been searching for a vision of its development. However, the former center of the district faces significant challenges, and the demolition of the former textile factory Tepna is next on their list. This summer a new zoning plan was approved, which, however, will not significantly aid the city's development and rather holds the trend of the previous plan. A trend that is somewhat problematic today and cannot specify a clear vision on how the city should continue in its development.
Due to the sale of a large area in close proximity to the center and at the foot of the castle hill into private hands, the city has lost a considerable part of its influence over its future direction.
The proximity to the center, the morphology of the terrain, and the city’s continuation beyond the complex clearly offer a solution in the direction of creating a residential urban neighborhood inspired by examples from Western European cities. The combination of dense housing (so-called low rise high density buildings) with local job opportunities largely meets the demands of today’s residents.
In order to summarize the current situation, I will borrow part of the opposing report prepared by architect Viktor Vlach – a native of Náchod.
“Náchod is a town of twenty thousand inhabitants lying in the valley of the Metuje River and surrounded by picturesque hills. The whole basin is dominated by the castle, which originally served as a watchtower overseeing the trade route from Bohemia to Silesia. The city's historically precious flat terrain configuration has been encroached upon by its historic center in the foothills and adjacent streets lining the main trade route. After the regulation of the Metuje River, which freed the constricted center, space was made for the railway, the main axis of vehicular traffic was separated from the core, schools and public institutions were supplemented, as were blocks for housing – and also industry. The textile factory Tepna, whose land is the subject of this thesis, employed up to five thousand people from the city and surrounding areas until the early nineties. The forced cessation of operations seemed to trigger a longstanding curse on the entire complex. Gradual deterioration of buildings, the rejection of pre-emptive rights to strategic land by city management, the intention of the new owner to build a giant mono-functional commercial complex with extensive parking, demolition of remaining buildings, and construction waste landfill in the middle of the city are understandable efforts by locals to prevent this development – which is devastating for urban life – from happening.
The situation of the former Tepna complex is unique both in its scale and its location within the city. It lies in the imaginary center of a triangle formed by the square, the castle, and the train and bus stations. With its area of five hectares, where, for example, the castle or the square could fit five times, it is possibly a unique case within the whole republic.
The organism of the city is uncontrollably sprawling across the valuable hills in the surrounding area, guestworkers descending for work, education, shopping, or official matters, commuting daily back and forth in several cars, continuously whining that the traffic situation is unbearable. And meanwhile, a huge piece of land lies fallow in the heart of Náchod, from which it has been cast aside like rubble. Until we understand this, we should not be surprised that our cities are collapsing.”

Land
I propose dividing the area into individual minimum plots measuring 7 x 17.5 meters. This dimension respects the previously mentioned grid composed of squares of 3.5 meters per side. Such proposed plots allow for the construction of a functional house with two residential units. In the scheme, I designate only the plots intended for sale.

I do not allow the plots to be further divided; they can only be merged into larger units.

In the structure, 2-meter-wide passages are programmatically left to avoid complete blockage of the street front and thus prevent disrupting the permeability of the block.

At the same time, there is a rule of a minimum distance of 1m from mutual property borders on each side unless any building lines state otherwise. This gives me the opportunity to position the entrances to the houses in these spaces and gain a distance of 2m from the side walls of the individual houses.

The concept of living in such created structures presupposes a change in behavior of their residents and a mindset towards today’s trends of shared ownership, as presented, for example, in the British pavilion curated by Jack Self at the architectural biennale in Venice in 2016.
Buildings

The structure of the newly designed buildings should be a combination of the advantages of a dense urban core with the advantages of living in an individual family house. The main benefits of living in classic urban development are primarily short distances and the availability of shops and services without the necessity of transporting by car. For some, the invaluable feeling of a certain mutual cohesion among residents can be appreciated. The desire for living in a family house reflects on its subsequent advantages. Own entrance, contact with the exterior/garden, tranquility, the possibility of using multiple floors, and an overview of the property due to the ability to walk around it.

Functional and height regulation is based on local circumstances and needs. The use is regulated only at ground level to respond to the importance of individual public spaces and allow for flexible and multifunctional use of individual plots, and consequently the whole area. The aim is to achieve quality housing linked with the possibility of business at the place of residence, thus reducing demands for transportation and other infrastructure within the city. The resulting effect of these interventions is an economically and ecologically functioning urban structure.

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Martin Holada: Two-Year Apartments

The subject of the project was a construction solution in the location of the Solidarita housing estate. This estate was built at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s in the Prague Strašnice district. Residential buildings and a large number of row houses known as Two-Year Apartments were built here. The solutions for these row houses were relatively simple and yet functional for their time. Today’s needs and demands do not fully meet them, and thus interventions that literally parasite the original visual representation of individual houses appear between the rows of houses. Beyond the visual discrepancies among homes, a more practical problem has emerged in recent times for this post-war housing estate. That being the space for cars.
The project addresses a different approach to the reconstruction or replacement of the houses. The newly designed object and the complex of parking houses, as well as the residential tower block, are based on the mass principle of existing houses; horizontal and vertical lines in the area of load-bearing walls and ceilings.
Two parking houses are positioned so they connect with the existing buildings, and the tower block complements the height context between the current administrative building and the recently built apartment house.
The mass design of the house in the row is intended as an interconnection of the existing structure with the new one that would link back to the three new objects. The very concept of the house deepens the idea of simple homes in greenery. The back of the façade allows only visual contact, while the front side, made of brick fence panels as a symbol of socialist construction, literally penetrates parts of trees.

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Kristián Holan: The Walls of Nymburk

to be continued...

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