Summer School of Architecture Kopřivnice Brownfield 2014 - ceremonial opening

Summer School of Architecture 2014 Kopřivnický Brownfield is taking place in Kopřivnice from Friday, September 5 to Saturday, September 13, 2014. It is attended by three dozen students from Czech and Slovak architectural universities, who are working in five groups led by professional architects.
Their task is to design the transformation of "the buffer zone," where the now-unused industrial zone of the former Tatra car factory meets the urban environment. The result is expected to be a cohesive conversion of various industrial objects and their possible functioning in the near future.
A fundamental prerequisite is the real applicability of all projects, which will be presented to the public for the first time on Friday, September 12, 2014, from 1 PM to 5 PM, with the participation of the city mayor Josef Jalůvka at the Catholic House (Štramberská 378, Kopřivnice). The professional guarantors of the summer school program are architect Kamil Mrva and journalist specializing in architecture Petr Volf.
“I have long been interested in the conversion of industrial complexes that have already served their purpose or ceased to function. When I learned from Kamil Mrva that it would be possible to tackle such a task with students in Kopřivnice, I was immediately convinced that this is the right place for our event this year,” explains Petr Volf.
The lecturers for the student groups are leading Czech architects Karel Janča, Pavel Nasadil, Jitka Ressová, Svatopluk Sládeček, Zdeněk Trefil, and Radim Václavík, who collaborate with young local architects as assistants. In such a constellation, very intense exchanges of experience occur. Working in groups allows participants of the summer schools to adopt a team approach, which they are not typically taught during their studies and encounter only in practice.
Professional guarantor Petr Volf describes the goal of the summer architecture schools: “Our intention is to bring students closer to architecture than they can in regular education. And to try to change the atmosphere of the given place, to revitalize it a bit. However, an external perspective must not mean arrogance - we strive for students to empathize with the city's situation and understand it. We have managed to quickly form a community capable of pulling together, which is largely due to the architects teaching here.”
Kopřivnický Brownfield continues the previous two successful years of summer schools, which were organized as part of the project Architecture Beyond Centers. The first year took place in 2012 in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm and focused on designing in a protected landscape area. The second was held in Plasy in western Bohemia, where students addressed the contemporary identity of the locality dominated by the monastery in their projects. The themes of the summer schools are always chosen to reflect current trends and issues that arise in post-industrial society.
“The main benefit of this event is the involvement of young architects in practice with the aim of showing a new, external opinion on improving and supplementing the area between the center and the industrial zone. Moreover, it is a very timely topic, and its processing can serve as a guide for other cities,” states architect Kamil Mrva.

The organizer of the Summer School of Architecture 2014 Kopřivnický Brownfield 2014 is the architectural office Kamil Mrva Architects and the Society for Legal and Economic Education. Partners include the City of Kopřivnice, the Commission for Architecture and Urbanism of the City of Kopřivnice, and the Faculty of Art and Architecture of the Technical University of Liberec.

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