Compact City / Compact City

In today's European context, the needs and ambitions to establish new cities are not evident. Existing cities are experiencing the greatest changes on their peripheries due to regulations of all kinds. Instead of intensive utilization of the entire city, the city is expanding extensively and pushing out everything it cannot absorb. However, the inner city is not a completed, definitive structure, but a constantly changing organism that needs new impulses from within for its life. A compact city does not mean creating new boundaries, but opening up the possibility of building within what is already built.

Instead of the question:

How to design a city?

we should be asking:

How to design within the city?

or:

How to design within the designed?

The exhibition Compact City will be an interactive response to these questions in a 359 m³ space of the Brno Gallery of Architecture.
Five exhibitors, four from the Visegrad Group countries and one from Austria, will create thematic installations throughout the duration of the exhibition in a continuous workshop format. Each participant will have the entire exhibition hall of the gallery for a week to realize their installation, with the assistance of students participating in the workshop. The installation will culminate in a presentation by the exhibitor and their confrontation with an invited speaker. The prerequisite for each installation is the sharing of the exhibition hall with others and the additive concept of the exhibition. The exhibition is essentially an unfinished experiment, just like the city itself.
After the Brno installation, the Compact City will be transported to forum experimentelle architektur in Vienna. Here, during the Brno exhibition, every new phase of the installation will also appear in the form of projections from the window of f.e.a. in the courtyard of Museumsquartier.

Dates of openings/presentations by exhibitors:

Sat 19. 3. 18:00	Peter Stec/SK
Sat 26. 3. 18:00	Pavel Hnilička, Ida Čapounová, Jan Pfeiffer/CZ
Sat 2. 4. 18:00	Levente Polyák/HU
Sat 9. 4. 18:00	Gabu Heindl/AT
Sat 16. 4. 18:00	Pawel Wachnicki, Aleksandra Wachnicka/PL

Invited speakers during presentations:

Ján Pernecký/SK, Imro Vaško/SK, Sabine Müller/DE, Petr Hurník/CZ, Tomáš Pejpek/CZ, and others

The final discussion of all exhibitors will take place during the last presentation.

Venue: Gallery of Architecture, Starobrněnská 18, 602 00 Brno, CZ
Duration: 19. 3. - 24. 4. 2011
Curators: Szymon Rozwalka, Jakub Kopec, Petra Hlaváčková

Contact: 4AM Forum for Architecture and Media
[email protected]
www.forum4am.cz

Contact person: Jakub Kopec, tel. +420 732 619 909

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Peter Stec/SK - Studied architecture at TU in Bratislava and TU in Vienna. Graduated from Die Angewandte in Vienna and Princeton University in New Jersey. Worked for Asymptote, Coop Himmelb(l)au, OMA, and HdM. Currently leads a studio at VŠVU in Bratislava.

Pavel Hnilička, Ida Čapounová, Jan Pfeiffer/CZ
Pavel Hnilička - Studied architecture at ČVUT in Prague with Ladislav Lábus and Alena Šrámková. Completed postgraduate studies at ETH Zurich with Dietmar Eberle. Currently leads his own studio in Prague.
Ida Čapounová - Graduated from VŠUP in Prague with Petr Keil. Currently works at the office of Pavel Hnilička and also participates in the leisure architectural workshop iuch.
Jan Pfeiffer – Studies intermediate creation at AVU in Prague. In addition to exhibition activities, he is the organizer of the Pavilion gallery in the center of Prague.

Levente Polyák/HU – Independent researcher and author. Studied architecture, art theory, and sociology in Budapest and Paris. Participant in various urban research programs of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and a member of international urban information networks. Organizer of workshops, conferences, and exhibitions on contemporary urban phenomena. Member of the organizing team of 2010 Budapest European Capital of Culture.

Gabu Heindl/AT – Studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Geijutsu Daigaku in Tokyo. Graduated from Princeton University (Fulbright Scholarship). Worked at Diller+Scofidio in New York and de Architekten Cie. in Amsterdam. Currently runs her own office GABU Heindl Architecture in Vienna. Teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and also works at TU Graz, Princeton University, TU Delft, Berlage Institute Rotterdam, Städelschule Frankfurt, or AA London.

Aleksandra Wachnicka, Pawel Wachnicki/PL
Aleksandra Wachnicka – Studied architecture at the Polytechnic in Szczecin. Collaborates with Pawel Wachnicki in the architectural office C+HOAR.
Pawel Wachnicki - Studied architecture at the Polytechnic in Szczecin and Hogeschool in Groningen. Currently runs his own office C+HOAR.