Workshop in Bratislava – Slovakia

04–07 September 2023

The September workshop of UiS and FAD STU in Bratislava focused on two main themes. Firstly, the aim was to review the joint activities so far implemented and to plan the next steps of our cooperation. However, there was even more important mission: and thus through living- experience to introduce the partners from UiS to the realities of urban planning and architectural design in Slovakia. We focused on understanding both the specifics of urban planning and community building at the scale of the neighborhood and settlement but also at the scale of regional contexts. This involves understanding the so-called;hard parameters; as well as the planning and decision-making context, through meetings and discussions with local government representatives and analysis of selected sites. Post-socialist cities represent a specific type of hard – built environment, characterised by highly fragmented and super-heterogeneous structure, a housing stock in a critical condition, problems associated with a non-existent hierarchy of public spaces, or dependence on car traffic. Understanding the decision-making context is in turn key to identifying appropriate, applicable know-how that can be transffered from other contexts.