Architect David Vávra loves trains and rides his bike to work

České Budějovice - Architect and theater artist David Vávra loves traveling by train and rides his bicycle to work whenever possible. At the Ekofilm festival, where he was a guest at a block of cheerful films about nature, he was most looking forward to the screening in the Kinematovlak. "I have never been in a cinema on a train in my life," he confided to the audience in České Budějovice, one of the cities he referred to as "charming".
    According to him, the train is the best means of transportation, and whenever possible, he always chooses this mode of transport. "I don’t like buses very much; you can't walk in them, and there is no dining car. I wrote most of my works in the dining car," Vávra told ČTK. He has also traveled all the pendolino routes and has always been satisfied.
    Although he owns a car, he tries to bike to work, covering about 20 kilometers a day in Prague. He is bothered that no consideration is given to cyclists in the centers of Czech cities – especially in Prague – even though bike paths would greatly help solve traffic problems. Moreover, drivers are arrogant and do not consider cyclists as partners. "Meanwhile, we traveled through Berlin and Copenhagen with the kids, and we always reached the city center completely without accidents. I think nothing has moved in this regard in Prague over the past 20 years," he noted.
    Thanks to one of the screened films at Ekofilm, he was transported back 13 years when, in Tomáš Vorel's film, he first cleaned a stream and a forest, but then things took a turn. The festival's offer includes the television series Charming Cities, which the architect hosts - the organizers included an episode about České Budějovice, and Vávra revealed that viewers in South Bohemia can also look forward to Pootaví and Charming Šumava. However, he decided to conclude the series with the 66th episode because he believes it is time to look at this topic from a different perspective.
    He arrived as a promoter of good architecture, not as an environmentalist, yet the audience asked him about how he saves the environment in relation to the films he presented. One of the films encouraged people to have a meatless day at least once a week - Vávra claimed he could easily go without meat for two days a week. He also dislikes anonymous big-box stores. "I enjoy shopping the most from specific sellers, especially under the arcades of small towns," he stated.
    In another film, a seller of artificial flowers praised his goods and emphasized that they do not grow, which makes them advantageous for architects planning greenery in interiors. Vávra said he would not place an artificial flower in his apartment but admitted that there are architectural tasks where using plastic plants is appropriate. "Everything that man has made has some purpose, even if bizarre," he believes.
    Near Bezděz, he is proposing an ecological house, but he claims the time when these buildings will have a greater chance of becoming widespread is yet to come. People are currently inundated with catalog homes, and the biggest problem lies in the fact that satellite towns are created for quick profit. "Suburban settlements have no hierarchy of space. The streets lead nowhere; they are as short and narrow as possible, with no mature greenery, no surprises. Large houses are built on small plots, and they have blue pools in their gardens," he described his recent view of the Czech landscape from an airplane. He is frightened by how many buildings are rising in the Czech Republic on green fields - whereas, for example, in Norway, which has thirty times as much such land, new structures are allowed to be built only on former developed plots.