Festival Street For Art is the IDEAL ZONE in Jižní Město

Street For Art, one of the few festivals focused on public space, has returned to Jižní Město. Its fourth edition, taking place this week right by the Opatov metro station, emphasizes public space as a place for life, which should provide a suitable environment for daily social activities. The centerpiece of this year's festival is the so-called IDEAL ZONE, a platform measuring 30 x 30 meters, which is meant to showcase a well-functioning place for life in public space with all that such a space should include.

The festival's location in Jižní Město, the largest housing estate in the Czech Republic, serves as a symbolic exclamation mark, highlighting the need to think about public space not only in the context of the city center but also its outskirts.

“We organize the festival primarily to emphasize that public space is fundamentally about people. Ideally, it should be adapted to the needs of those who use it. Who those people are and what their real needs are, these are the questions we want to find answers to during the festival. The IDEAL ZONE is meant to be a model of an ideal public space, a kind of living place between buildings that, at least for a while, serves people and their real needs.” says the festival's program director David Kašpar.

The architectural form of the IDEAL ZONE was designed by the studio Mjölk architekti, which also took care of its implementation. This group of creative architects gained attention for example with a guerrilla-built sauna in the middle of the Liberec dam, which then became a hit in foreign architectural magazines for several months. However, the specific form of the IDEAL ZONE depends largely on the festival's visitors themselves. They have the opportunity to adjust and arrange the IDEAL ZONE furniture according to their needs. This provides them with an extraordinary experience: children will have a place to play, there will be places to sit, places to look at, and perhaps they will manage to meet someone or simply relax in peace.

“From the beginning, we stuck to the concept of a large area of 30 x 30 meters that will be the venue for the entire program. For the area, which is completely constructed from europallets and spruce boards, it was necessary to design facilities, which we decided to address as a scaffolding hall. It provides a covered space for a bar, an audience area with a stage, and a chillout zone with a view of the outdoor area. The facade is covered with translucent nonwoven fabric and has a projection surface on it.” describes one of the mjölk architects, Jan Vondrák.

The precursor to the entire event was the realization of urban furniture as advertising for SFA. This involved three mobile modules that the mjölk architects created together with Žanda Gebauer /relaxation module - 3x3 m, forest module with a tree - 3x1 m, and module with a water surface - 3x1 m/. “A random passerby could configure the modules into any composition, thus creating a unique environment for relaxation.” explains Vondrák. The installation appeared at several significant places in Prague, including Jungmann Square, Republic Square, and near the National Technical Library, two weeks before the festival began.

The festival was launched with a special edition of Pecha Kucha Night dedicated to public space. The program includes creative workshops with personalities such as Radim Babák (street obstacles for teenagers), Pavel Karous (walk among normalization sculptures in JM), the duo Artamonov + Klyukov (art object), Žanda Gebauer (children's bunker), Mjölk architects (community bench), and Jan Pfeifer (on public space).

The festival also targets professionals – a series of discussions, a Forum on Landscape, and a conference Some Ideas for Better Cities dedicated to topics of public space, architecture, art, and sociology offer meetings with interesting Czech and foreign guests, including the famous Berlin Raumlabor, Adam Gebrian, and many other experts.

“We were happy to accept the invitation to collaborate because we perceive the festival and everything the guys from KC Zahrada do as an important part of community life in Jižní Město. We see public space as a functional tool in shaping social interaction, which directly affects the quality of life in a given locality. The festival is, of course, also a new challenge and a great experience for us.” adds architect Jan Vondrák.