Tomáš Petrášek: Sunday Landscape - Two Plans of the Novohrady Landscape

Jury evaluation: The author of the proposal has successfully connected to the history and development of the South Bohemian landscape. The jury positively evaluates the artistic processing, which embodies authenticity and experience. Through modern expressive means, the proposal convincingly complements the cultural environment. The bold approach to the theme of the monument in the landscape is particularly valuable.

---

The town of Nové Hrady is a significant tourist center in the eastern part of the Novohradské Mountains and the wider vicinity overall. It is located in one of the most pristine corners of the already quite attractive South Bohemia. It lies about 35 km east of České Budějovice, approximately 3 km from the border with Austria, on a promontory above the confluence of the Stropnice River and the Novohradský Stream, a foothill of the gently undulating Novohradské foothills leading into the wooded plain of the Třeboň Basin. The impressiveness of this location is enhanced by the nearby steeply rising massifs of Vysoká (1034 m) and Kraví hora (958 m), with the pilgrimage church of Dobrá Voda at their foot, dominating the wide surroundings. The town itself, despite its small size, is of great historical value and has a strong "urban" character. This is reinforced by the immediate contrast of the historic organic development and the open landscape at the edge of the promontory, creating a unique panorama that is clearly visible when arriving from České Budějovice. Here we find a castle, a Renaissance residence forming a whole frontage of a regular square, a church with a monastery, whose slender white tower is an unforgettable accent in a sea of surrounding forests, and also the Empire-style "Nový Zámek" with an adjacent park and a true rarity - the space in front of the northern castle facade is the beginning of an 8 km long visual axis, made visible by a forest clearing with a planted linden alley, once ending with a faux-obelisk on a solitary terrain wave. All forest paths in its vicinity form an orthogonal grid, deviated from the clearing line by 45°. In close proximity to the town, in the Valley by Nové Hrady, there is the sentimental landscape park Terčino Údolí, with numerous remarkable Empire-style buildings in various stages of preservation, various bridges, and also an artificial waterfall led along the contour from the Stropnice River. There was once a pavilion on a nearby Žárský pond, set on an island within it, which allegedly had a view of the castle in Nové Hrady. Both the pavilion and the obelisk have not survived to this day.

From all this, it is clear that care for the landscape and its elevation to something akin to higher significance is not accidental, but intentional, a testament to the systematic effort created over generations by the originally Belgian noble family of Buquoys, who settled in Nové Hrady since the post-Battle of White Mountain period.

Such nobility impresses upon us the feeling that the region has more in common with the noble culture of the Austrian Danube and Vienna than with the significantly earthy genius loci of our Czech basin, similar to the Moravian parallel of the ideal landscape - the Liechtenstein Lednice-Valtice area. This uniqueness was also the reason why I chose this theme at all...

COMPREHENSIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSAL:
The task that the work set out for itself was initially a reflection on how to create a cohesive whole from these interesting isolated fragments, with its own laws, albeit introvertibly ungraspable. From everything present here, a clear stratification into two planes is evident. One encompasses concrete, lived places, perceivable at first glance, and the second, "higher" plane, is a more abstract mental construction of geometric relationships of important places, silently yet fanfaronically announcing coded messages about the magnitude and need for the unspeakable.
Both planes coexist in one space, yet as if in different dimensions, with the focal points of this landscape tabletop game, otherwise familiar objects, becoming profound meeting places of spacetime, bottomless wells, stairways to heaven, or merely naive imaginations of an exalted spirit...

1st Plane:
The first plane represents, rather vulgarly put, an "extension" of the Terčino Údolí nature park to the church in Dobrá Voda, where I plan to restore the faded spa glory from the times of the Rožmberks, and along the way, to temporarily revive the deaf-mute genius loci of Horní Stropnice, an today forgotten border village that is itself unaware of its potential. Of course, it won't just be about the "valley," which is another essential point of the proposal - how to define the whole route - it is straightforward in a real valley, as it is linear by nature, thus - it leads somewhere, but what to do when we reach the end and arrive at boundless foothills? Should we fence off the path so that people are aware of it? Mark it with flags? My solution is as follows: the second part of the route is as if sprinkled with planted groves of solitary deciduous trees, which, like "a line of cocaine," carefully follow and visualize the course of the route, discreetly fading away to the sides, respecting the distinguished distance of the existing tree lines. Horní Stropnice and its surroundings thus gain another dimension, enriching the wardrobe of its existing grimaces. In the spirit of the pavilions in Terčino Údolí, the route is unburdened with additional objects, small architectures of various senses and nonsense.
A detailed description of Terčino Údolí can be found below, in the attached research of existing things; it is worth mentioning the very beginning of the route, moved by the proposal closer to the town, to the chapel at the former village green in the village of Údolí. The restoration of the village green space is planned, and the castle foothills will gain a dignified focal point where the main new building in the shape of "Z" essentially represents an entrance gate with side wings - a museum of local landscape beauty in one, and an information center in the other. By establishing a new spacious parking lot hidden
After completing the existing route, where only the restoration of the Blue House - a semi-ruined pavilion is planned, we will ascend to the Dam of the Humenice Reservoir, which holds the waters of the Stropnice River, the current end of the walking circuit, where the whole idea originated. From here, further creative efforts continue. At the moment it seems that everything is over, we will notice from the top of the dam a not uninteresting view of the Dobrá Voda church with the massif of Kraví hora across the water surface. This is nothing but a thrown gauntlet for those who still haven't had enough to catch their breath while returning on a loop around the Cuknštejn Fortress.
Just below the road leading across the dam, I will break through a "tunnel" - a living view oriented to Dobrá Voda, elevating it to a gallery exhibit, and I will place a light transparent object, a tea house - "Water House," on the ominous concrete bell-shaped outlet, with an accessible pier. From there, we can continue in two directions, either along the shore of the reservoir, where we can watch the opposite village of Humenice as a panopticon, a theatrical performance "Year in the Village." Why not take a boat ride? Along the shore, two absurd stops will arise - "Evening Stairs" and "Amphitheater." Then the shallow valley will lead us to an expanded meander wrapping around a low promontory, on which lies the center of the village of Horní Stropnice - the ancient church. An enchanting view presents itself, today virtually unexploited. We also meet the parallel route again.
This leads from the dam across the Plain of Deciduous Groves, initially enclosed between coastal vegetation and an otherwise ordinary forest, in the heart of which guards a circular glade on a terrain hillock, with three radial rays of omitted views in three directions, aimed at the Water House, the Cuknštejn fortress, and simultaneously the churches of Horní Stropnice and Dobrá Voda, both almost in cover, in short, we become spectators of a private rendezvous of the powerful, bearing the name "Glade of Dedication." Further, we wind along the plain, resting or picnicking under the crowns of once perhaps centenarian trees, noting a mysterious monumental object - "Pedestal," actually just a support wall defining a flat area, accessible by a long staircase, along with the Evening Stairs resonate slightly with the baroque staircase of the Dobrá Voda temple. From the area, one can undisturbedly observe a large column, Column No. 3, shining at night, and behind it, something like a frame or gate emerges in the middle of the fields. We are honored to become acquainted with the members of the higher game. Two paths lead from the route across the plain connecting it with the riverside path. Gradually, with the descent, we approach the aforementioned promontory, during gradual mutual shifting of the two church dominants, for whose choreography the entire plain becomes a comfortable audience.
We stand again at the foot of the promontory, ascending the proposed house - staircase - "Propylaea." They will lead us to the very focal point of the spiral square - in front of the doors of the originally Romanesque church. The Propylons remind us of the gate, the frame, similar to that in the fields, through which the surrounding landscape urgently penetrates into urbanity, much like in the painting "Street Noise Penetrates into the Houses," whose author I unfortunately cannot recall. On the other side of the square, we slip through a gate resembling a passage into a charming alley descending back to the Stropnice on the other side of the meander. In the alley, cobblestones and a staircase have been built, further the path follows the garden fences transformed into stone walls, all together with the proposed regulation of some scars of the town, awakening the cursed urbanity, so pleasantly bizarre in the rural environment. The river leads us to the local swimming pool, where on the other side of the road, as an indicator, the motif of the deciduous grove - "Grove of Forgiveness" re-emerges, here with a clear purpose to comfort the view of the collective farm complex. Beyond the following pond, bypassable from both sides, views of Dobrá Voda open up from the groves, as if its breath were already felt. On the horizon of a small hill to the left, I propose a small archetypal place - "Poplar and Canopy," a space for rest and reflection. We can either watch it from a distance or visit and return to the route, or reach the goal through the "Land of Robert the Twin," a gently undulating foothill with beautiful views, animated by field paths lined with young vegetation with two views of distant churches, "Menhir" and the remarkable wooden belfry, visible from afar. All of this arose recently from the enthusiasm of the gentleman mentioned below. However, it might be more logical to return through this area and dream about the Poplar with Canopy for a while longer, granting us a triumphant arrival into the spa town, proudly fortified against the landscape with stone terraces of the new parking lot, swimming pool, and spa below the square, to which we ascend via wide stairs.
The front of the square oriented towards the landscape is formed by a colonnade with a newly conducted spring, through which we observe the entire landscape we passed through and did not pass through, from a closer bird's perspective, finally allowing us to appreciate the superior landscape plan. In the village, apart from the church, only about one-fifth of the original buildings have survived, compared to the pre-war state. - my effort is to complement this lost puzzle, even if newly, especially by adding a completely non-original square, its existence defying the relentless terrain, bordered by the above-mentioned colonnade, the building of the spa, most of which lies beneath part of the square, reconstructed from the former economic part of the historically valuable building beneath the church, and a building of higher height relative to local standards beside the church, which has an identical twin on its other side, both of which form something like "quotation marks" for the church. The square lies at two different levels, just as a large part of the contour-oriented main street, which in the section west of the church resembles a narrow rectangular square. All traffic is directed to the lower level, while the upper remains a calm forecourt of the church staircase with a healing spring. Both levels are connected by a ramp, linking the church with the square.
The potential significance of Dobrá Voda is further enhanced by the existence of its neighboring, higher positioned Hojná Voda, about 1 km away. The name itself indicates the same spa history. The restoration of the remains of a similar urban structure there is also straightforward, it could thus create an interesting interaction between the two "Waters."
As a cherry on top, there exists another possible walk - an ascent to Kraví hora (958 m), a hill with a lookout tower and stone formations on top.

2nd Plane:
Its most essential point is the relationship between the church in Nové Hrady and the church in Dobrá Voda. They are connected by an imaginary line, on which lies approximately halfway a mysterious gate, an object without a clear function, from whose vicinity this special position is not apparent, which we perceive only upon ascending to Dobrá Voda, the gradual realization of these relationships from initial misunderstanding creates an interesting, almost suspenseful story. Near the axis, the Horní Stropnice church timidly joins in the game, visible in several composed views, once, just like the Nové Hrady church, from the alleys in the Land of Robert the Twin, and a second time in cover with the Dobrá Voda church from the tri-rayed circular glade in the Grove of Dedication, from which the new Water House and the ancient fortress Cuknštejn can also be seen. From the material mass of the nearby embankment of the Humenice Reservoir, a tunnel-like glimpse again to the Dobrá Voda church is created by removing the mass of the material. In this extraordinary concentration of unique phenomena, there is yet another column, placed on a perpendicular to the axis of Nové Hrady - Dobrá Voda, hypothetically raised at the site of the monument, while the column also features in the view. However, the column is not just a suddenly appearing vertical; it is one of three members of a special brotherhood of columns, glowing at night, guarding significant places, defining in the landscape a triangular field of their mutual tension. It is this identity that brings the broader landscape into mutual unity in the name of something higher. Another column is located on an island in the Žárský pond, where there once stood a pavilion with a view of the castle, and their hypothetical connection still lingers in the ether. There, it functions as an advanced lookout at the main approach to the microregion, thus from České Budějovice, and is the first landmark in the region's unusual aerial contests. The final column concludes the preserved visual axis with a clearing leading away from the castle, precisely at the site of the former obelisk. The axis of the clearing thus connects the sacred triangle with solid points, cornerstones. The triangle soars like a dragon in the free plains of the wooded Třeboň region, tethered by a rope to the ancient town of Nové Hrady. The impression of a cohesive whole made up of individually collected impressions is also supported by the intentional visual or principled similarity of some objects; again, it is once more a trio. The first object we glimpse is a solitary gate in the fields, just simple supports and lintels, an archetype, almost the essence of architecture. This experience awakens our view of the gate - staircase at the church in Horní Stropnice, and finally for the third time the form of the colonnade at the Dobrá Voda square. Again, it seems as if there exists an imaginary triangle, the second one, while the third trio is the Grove of Dedication with three rays of views.