kruh spring 2024 - Martin Schmitz and Ondřej Fous

In the first part of the April lecture evening, Martin Schmitz, representative of the Berlin landscape architecture studio Loidl, will present. His lecture titled City and Wilderness will focus on the theme of wilderness within the urban environment: where to find it, what tools to use for its creation, and how to preserve it. Martin Schmitz states that wilderness can be an unplanned, spontaneous, and surprising element of the urban landscape. He will also introduce the approach of the Loidl studio to this issue and demonstrate how they strive to address significant global problems, such as biodiversity loss and extreme climate events, and their impacts on life in cities.
In the second part of the lecture evening, garden architect and gardener Ondřej Fous will speak. His lecture titled Survival of the Urban Park will focus on public green spaces and their transformation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Key topics will include the sustainability of historical traditions and customs in parks, and it will also address the search for wilderness in the city. A discussion with both speakers will follow the lecture. 

The lecture will be conducted in English.

Martin Schmitz is part of the team at Atelier Loidl, where he works together with Leonardo Groß on designs and competitions for public spaces. Martin focuses on conceptual work and is interested in projects that have ecological and social goals. He has been with Atelier Loidl since 2013 and is responsible for organizing competitions. Additionally, since 2019, he has been teaching at the Department of Landscape Architecture and Design at LU Hannover and participates in juries at various universities.
Atelier LOIDL is a Berlin landscape architecture studio specializing in transforming abandoned spaces in cities. One of their significant projects is the transformation of a park on the former railway yard Gleisdreieck near Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. This park lay unused for a long time. The new design offers a generous yet poetic and simple solution, which includes playgrounds, sports facilities, community gardens, and relaxation spaces. The studio has also received multiple awards and regularly participates in architectural competitions, including a significant contribution to the design of the Vltava Philharmonic by Barozzi and M1 Architekti, who placed second, and in Slovakia, they achieved success in Bratislava, winning the competition for the design of Námestí SNP and Kamenné náměstí.

Ondřej Fous is a gardener, publicist, educator, and author of landscape solutions.  He is actively engaged in the revival and quality of the gardening craft. He is among the designers of the landscaping portion of the revitalization of Čelakovské sady and the surroundings of the National Museum in Prague, as well as Moravské náměstí in Brno. Since 2005, he has been working on the face of the castle park in Mcelí. He has long focused on the restoration of villa gardens. He is the author of the series #treeisnotdecoration, which addresses the ethics of tree life in the city. He founded the "journal from the world of persistence" pereny.eu, supporting opinion pluralism. Ondřej Fous also leads the gardening alternative project Zámecké zahradnictví Ctěnice with an annual perennial school for landscape architecture students and is active in TRSEM – Trvalky Semanín, where he focuses on the selection of perennial garden plant assortments.