Trees as silent inhabitants predetermine the future of a space… An installation by the Partero garden studio in front of the former slaughterhouse as part of Landscape festival Ostrava.

The suburban nothingness surrounding the building of the future gallery has been furnished with several points of reference. They help us recall what used to be – and at the same build a bridge to things that will be. From the beginning, the scale of the space has evoked a forum, a place where public life was thriving in the past – where trials, elections, markets, parades and oratories were held.

This place in the heart of Moravská Ostrava was thriving with a different kind of life – for here blood pulsated in veins of animals for slaughter, trade in carved meat blossomed, and butchers were at work instead of orators and officers.

The simple concept is based on these two aspects. Form, in this case the space, is loosely accentuated employing a geometrical division into plain subspaces – a primary intervention into the “void”.

The geometry is built by fine modelling which sets it apart from the surroundings. The trees within are bound to improve a stay on the sunny piazzetta in the future life on the forum.

The newly created places will soon be opened to citizens – they will be able to spend their leisure time in the resulting “pockets of green”.

The starting point, a primary spatial intervention, will arise as part of Landscape Festival Ostrava. It can be further developed as a work of others. We leave it as an open matter how universal it will be or whether it will be more or less adapted to the needs of the gallery.

But the past will not be forgotten – the bloody waste from slaughtered animals which once used to flow down the roads has been returned, in an abstract way, by means of red poppies which “flow” through a delimited space.

Red is not just the colour of blood, it is also the colour we have chosen because it helps us visually “highlight” the action in the given space.

We have it on the stakes fixing trees, on the objects which are found in the “pocket park”. Nevertheless, just as blood will dry and fade over time, the poppies will fade away one day. What remains is the trees which are at the foundation of Forum Arborum.

Partero

Atelier Partero (established in 2006) is headed by partners Mirka Svorová (1977, CZ) and Jakub Finger (1983, CZ). They studied garden and landscape architecture at Mendel University, Brno. They have won several Garden of the Year awards and other prizes. The studio focuses on a variety of projects, with the private garden remaining the focal point (from small atriums to landscape units covering several hectares). They live and work in Brno.

Organized by Landscape Festival in collaboration with PLATO.