Dialogues with History: lecture by Michal Fišer in Klatovy

Lecture by Michal Fišer "Dialogues with History"


Gallery U Bílého jednorožce in Klatovy 
November 21, 2014, at 6 PM
 
It is often said: "...to build on green fields." This implies building without barriers, without connections—spatial, natural, social, cultural. I believe such a place—non-place on Earth does not actually exist. I designed a barn nearby the village on a real green field. The position, shape, and usage of the house were ultimately determined by many other factors than the architect’s free invention. Every intervention, cultural touch of a person is a dialogue with the place. This does not mean remaining passive. On the contrary, only an intense, thorough dialogue opens up new possibilities and allows one to remain responsible, generous, and self-confident. The outcome may be very understated, yet it can often seem formally striking. However, such a gesture does not come from haste. Only if courage is backed by a thorough understanding of the questions of place, which accumulate in its past, does it have a chance of success and final acceptance by that place and society.

Project "Dialogues with History"
The project is a series of lectures intended for the general public—all potential builders: private individuals, representatives of municipal or city administrations, and developers. It is primarily a message from the architect—not just as an individual or one studio, but information from architects as a whole directed towards society.
The project should sow and spread the idea that: just as relationships function between people in society, so do relationships in space, whether external or internal, between objects, between buildings, and between architecture and landscape, which all form the solid around us—our living space. Every intervention changes these relationships. A new dialogue is directed between the new and the original—a dialogue with history.
The builder—developer, municipal administration, private individual involved in creating space through building—bears responsibility for the impact of their house, for the change of relationships in space, a different context, new meanings. Recently, houses often cry out only for themselves. What pertains to taste, appropriateness, or adequacy of intervention is considered subjective. Lectures by selected architects should point out through concrete examples the objectivity of such assessments and the significance of the architect's work. Within an apartment, some people already understand that it depends on the whole and entrust the design to an interior designer. In planning our external space, understanding and awareness seem to be lacking, probably because it does not belong even marginally to basic education. The purpose of an architect's work is architecture that emerges from the existing context, from the utilization of its richness, from an analysis of broader relationships while also responding to the individual needs of the investor.
The speaker—currently active architect, theorist, popularizer of architecture—will present through their work, the work of their studio, or other specific examples, upon specific interventions, their reasons, their opinion—what and how they wanted to express, what they reacted to, how they wanted to communicate with history. They will show how one can work with space and what positives this can bring to our stay, how it can enrich our lives, and also how non-places arise—places where no one wants to linger, and that such places are increasing among us.
The project should alert society that without an informed investor, builder, or client, the architect is powerless, and that the quality of the outcome—the finished building—depends already on their brief.