Urban Interventions 01

The Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava held the opening of an exhibition on Thursday, December 4, 2008, which certainly deserves increased attention even beyond the borders of Bratislava, despite the close ties it has to the city. Urban Interventions 01 is an initiative that is idealistic, aims to provoke discussion, and wants to make a change. This ambitious project is backed by the young architectural firm Vallo Sadovsky Architects.

In recent years, the capital city of Slovakia has been marked by a rapid construction activity that has surprised everyone, leaving public spaces once again unnoticed. The dismal state of public spaces paradoxically evokes the early 1980s, when socialist construction and its planned, yet never completed, staging generated a lot of zero spaces and areas. It is ironic that the present hasn’t yet found a mechanism to systematically address the issue of public spaces.

Architects Matúš Vallo and Oliver Sadovský reached out to a total of 39 authors to compile a collection consisting of 50 different designs, opinions, or manifestos on the topic of public space in Bratislava.
The invited architects and artists offer, without any claim to remuneration, ideas and scenarios for urban moments and situations that are either problematic, deaf, or dysfunctional, seeking their lost or yet undiscovered potential. Underpasses, alleys, staircases, parks, marketplaces, promenades, pavilions, bridges, squares, surfaces, or urban furniture are topics that the architects enthusiastically engage with.

The project initiators believe that "even small changes can have a big effect" and try to turn the established way of distributing urban contracts upside down. Architectural theorist and architect Mária Topolčanská accurately described the project in the introductory text of the accompanying book, which is published on the day of the opening, labeling it as an urban blog and the authors as urban bloggers.
Architectural activism, which is so common in culturally more developed parts of the world, is finally starting to sow its seeds here as well. The project Urban Interventions 01 brings Bratislava a little closer to the cultural map of Europe, and we hope that the designation 01 has significance and that this initiative becomes a tradition, spreading like a positive virus to other cities.

The unexpectedly successful opening was also attended by the mayor of Bratislava, Andrej Ďurkovský, who promised that he would try to implement as many of the proposed concepts, which he said are ideal for funding from public sources.

The exhibition for the project Urban Interventions 01 will be on display at the Esterházy Palace of the Slovak National Gallery from November 4, 2008, and will last until March 1, 2009. The book Urban Interventions 01 will be on sale in selected bookstores.

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