Vendula Hnídková: Garden Cities - Lecture at the Fiducia Club

The lecture by the art historian will introduce the concept of garden cities as formulated by the English thinker and visionary Ebenezer Howard at the end of the 19th century.
The bold idea of a new residential entity and its reform potential quickly gained traction in Britain, but soon began to live a life of its own across continents. A significant chapter in the history of garden cities can be considered their construction in Central Europe, where, especially in industrial centers, the effort to improve the living conditions of workers and the poor resonated strongly. Although Howard himself dedicated two books to garden cities, it eventually became clear that translating his complex ideas fully into the reality of newly established cities was an exceedingly difficult task. Although many "garden cities" were built around the world, most were inspired by the original concept only selectively.
How did Howard's utopian idea of quality housing for all social classes weave through history? And how could garden cities reform society? Why did they vanish or become misinterpreted in Czech historiography? And are there any cities in the Czech Republic inspired by the concept of the progressive Englishman?
Vendula Hnídková is an architectural historian, working at the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She specializes in modern and contemporary architecture, often in relation to political developments. From 2018 to 2020, she stayed at the University of Birmingham, where, as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, she focused on the topic of garden cities. She contributed to two volumes of the publication Artistic Monuments of Prague. Greater Prague (2017). In the National Gallery in Prague, she prepared the exhibition National Style. Culture and Politics in 2013, and in Kunsthalle Prague in 2022, the exhibition Zenger's Transformation Station. Electricity in the City, Electricity in Architecture. Publications with the same names were released for both exhibitions. Besides garden cities, she is currently researching the activities of the Ministries of Public Works (1908-1938).