Next week, the Architecture Day 2020 festival will take place

On foot, by bike or on a run, on land and in water, from October 1 to 7, 2020, it will be possible to admire architecture in over a hundred cities and towns across the country and in Slovakia. The anniversary tenth year of the Architecture Day festival offers nearly 300 architectural walks, bike rides, excursions into normally inaccessible buildings with engaging commentary, as well as discussions and lectures. Former factories, modern eco-buildings, sacred architecture, forgotten Jewish monuments, hospital complexes, former working-class districts or department stores, as well as pathways through urban wilderness – this is just a narrow selection of this year’s program. In special sections, the festival will also commemorate significant personalities such as Adolf Loos, Josef Gočár, Otakar Novotný, Jaroslav Fragner, or Zdeněk Fránek, who is the fresh holder of the Architect of the Year 2020 award. “The program of the Architecture Day festival has been based on walks for a limited group of people since 2001, and the events are mainly held outdoors, so we believe that this year’s edition will take place as planned. Of course, we will respect all safety measures and believe that this year's edition will be a dignified celebration of ten years of our festival,” says the director and founder of the Architecture Day festival, Marcela Steinbachová.

This year’s program intertwines several themes. The ecological line of the festival will lead visitors to environmental centers or eco-friendly buildings, while also examining landscape changes and the significance of rivers for cities. It highlights the role of architecture and urbanism in society, whether it concerns the environment and sustainable development, the functionality of public buildings and spaces, or the transformations of various locations both socially and architecturally.
The festival program is free; however, advance reservations are required for selected events. As of today, reservations have begun in the regions, and from September 27, reservations will be opened for events in Prague. Architecture Day also offers a program for children and the first Czech film festival about architecture, Film and Architecture, which this year will bring foreign films dedicated to architecture and urbanism to cinema screens for the ninth time. The complete program is available at www.denarchitektury.cz and www.filmarchitektura.cz.
In the capital city, Architecture Day invites you to more than eighty various events that reflect the individual themes of the festival. The program attracts visitors to the urban wilderness under Barrandov, to Štvanice Island, or will guide through the area of Masaryk Station. It will focus on tourist traps, the problematic location of Plzeňská Street, or the revitalization of Čelakovského Sady and the surroundings of the National Museum. It will also offer walks in selected hospital campuses. Under the slogan Hurá dovnitř! (Let’s Go Inside!), the former sausage production facility transformed into office space in Nusle, or the boiler room of the General Faculty Hospital – an unknown technical building by Karel Prager – will open to the public exceptionally. Motorists and architecture fans will enjoy a visit to the Autoclub of the Czech Republic building. The Prague program will also cover the realizations of Adolf Loos, Josef Gočár, Otakar Novotný, Jaroslav Fragner, and Zdeněk Fránek. Among other things, it will offer a walk through cubist architecture.

The name of Josef Gočár is indelibly linked to Hradec Králové, where we will explore the interiors of schools and the assembly hall of priest Ambrož. However, Architecture Day also offers the opportunity to visit Gočár's unique functionalist school building in Ústí nad Labem. In Kladno, the program offers a walk through industrial heritage, art in public spaces, or a housing estate in Sítná. Parents and children will surely enjoy a tour of the unique Water House in Hulice or the award-winning Archeopark in Pavlov.

Under our highest mountain, several new extraordinary buildings worth visiting are hidden in the Krkonošsko region. In Vrchlabí, we will find the unique Krkonošské centrum environmentálního vzdělávání Krtek (Krkonoš Center for Environmental Education) by Petr Hájek. Recently, in Velká Úpa, the Game Landscape Pecka has been built by the authors Matěj Hájek and Tereza Kučerová, which aims to motivate parents and children to spend time in the forest under the high-altitude air in contact with natural materials. In Turnov, not only mountain hiking enthusiasts will appreciate the guided tour of the newly opened Museum of Climbing with its authors from the studio Hipposdesign Prague.
In Jablonec nad Nisou, we will explore the landscape and the city directly along the banks of the Bílá and Lužická Nisa rivers with architect Jakub Chuchlík. Interested parties may set out on a bike trip through the nine rural churches from the late Baroque period in Broumovsko, most of which are attributed to outstanding architects of European significance, Kryštof and Kilián Ignác Dientzenhofer. In Karlovy Vary and Mariánské Lázně, the program focuses on spa architecture. While in Karlovy Vary the focus will be on the architecture of the 1960s, the walk in Mariánské Lázně will follow the traces of architectural styles. The castle archery competition is being prepared for children and parents in Český Krumlov. In Vimperk, we will follow the transformation of industrial buildings from the 19th century to the present with historian Ladislav Čepička.
Alongside Prague, Architecture Day commemorates the personality of Adolf Loos in Brno, where it will be possible to follow the traces of the famous architect, including Bauer's villa, the only preserved Loos work in Brno. But Architecture Day will also head to the "White House" from the mid-1970s, over whose future question marks hover, and to the former working-class colony of Diviš's neighborhood, known as "Brno's Shanghai." Near Olomouc, we will look into the low-energy house Sluňákov in Horka nad Moravou, which was awarded the prestigious Grand Prix of Architects in 2007, with its author, architect Ondřej Hofmeister. Supporters of folk architecture can set out on a day-long bus trip into the heart of Žďárské vrchy after the reconstructions of timber houses and the new construction of cottages.

The program in Ostrava offers an introduction to the iconic department store OSTRAVICA-TEXTILIA, which served for over a century and is currently undergoing reconstruction. Another noteworthy department store in northern Moravia is the Breda department store – a construction by Leopold Bauer inspired by the Chicago School in Opava. The house was the largest department store in Czechoslovakia until the 1960s.

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