- Author Alice Pachněvičová
- Team bachelor (1st year), Basics of Landscape Design Špalková
- FA CTU in Prague
With Myself I am wandering through Libeň. Sky without a single cloud. Kids are playing around and shouting to each other. But I´m still going. I know where to hide. I know one calm place right in the middle of all this rush. I see hills with grass growing on them appearing in front of me. I take off my shoes and I´m continuing barefoot. I enjoy the tickling and fresh feeling on my toes. I come over the little hill and lay my head to the grass. Finally, just me and my book to read... The task was to design a place in a public space around the Rokytka river in Libeň in Prague 8, which would offer residents from the surrounding housing estates privacy, a place for work, entertainment and more ... In my proposal, I focus on providing privacy to an individual who is looking for a quiet nest in today's fast-paced world, where he could meditate, read a book, relax, think ... just be alone. I would like to achieve this privacy by modeling the terrain, creating embankments and excavations to create pitches for one or two people. Paths and dents would be covered with low grass. On the contrary, overgrown hills with a high grass mixture would form the right one atmosphere of overgrown meadow and intimacy. I also work with existing trees. I propose two phases of implementation. In the first, I focus on the addition of native trees and polytree species and the problem of invasive species that need to be removed to allow the existing suppressed trees to spread. In the second phase, which should take place after implementation, I propose two options - cutting down the remaining invasive species or keeping the area under close surveillance to prevent them from proliferating.
In the project With Myself, the winning entry in the category "small scale", the jury finds above all an extraordinary consistency between the idea/concept of the design and its presentation. The jury noted the general difficulty of maintaining such solutions. However, in the case of this subtle landscaping intervention, which is not mere decoration but the very essence of the design, it is more of an educational "footnote". The theme of solitude, contemplation and escape into the landscape is a fairly represented aspect in landscape design at present; however, this proposal manages to approach the theme creatively and with sufficient flexibility, and is well argued and clearly presented.