In summer 2022, the latest in a series of architecturally notable preschool new-builds was completed in Říčany near Prague. Situated at the edge of an existing low-rise development and a new housing area Větrník, it will most definitely stand out among the old and new family homes—the street front remains relatively modest with a simple white render finish, but in the back garden the massing unfolds in a series of bright colourful pyramidal shapes, or pagodas. Inside, the main entrance atrium is the heart of the building with a huge rope net hanging above, accessible from the gallery. In the classrooms, the irregular spaces underneath the pagodas’ slanting roofs become hideouts or teepees with scattered daylight coming in through small triangular windows.

If we are to understand and develop diversity in environmental design it is necessary to reevaluate the dialectical approach to it. Not in the sense of creating and emphasising polarities, but through listening to and observing the resonance of the life-giving tensions between them. In the same way vital stability needs occasional instability, viable domestication needs a certain amount of wilding. It makes it easier to accept otherness, which doesn’t have to mean a loss of existing values, but instead can be crucial for their restimulation and updating. It can help overcome the anthropocentric approach to the environment and decolonise its impacts in favour of new ecologies of interspecies coexistence.

As active users of public space, as skaters, we’re often intrigued by the smallest of details which others pass without notice. Joints in the pavement, bench edges, materials, barrier-free accessibility or ease of movement around a city. Skaters spend a lot of time in the streets, so they understand the city and its workings quite well. They know the best places to spend their free time, where to stop and sit down, where to skate. They like the interaction with the city and its inhabitants, they prefer the city centre to the skatepark somewhere on the periphery. They also have a mutually influential relationship with other social stratas. So skaters just tend to be public space experts. You can quickly tell the quality of a space by the presence of a group of young people riding around on something.

Three individual buildings make up the church complex in the village of Lidečko. The baroque-style Church of St Katherine of Alexandria, the 16th century clergy house and a new parish community centre, which replaced the original 1950s cultural centre. The shape of the new parish centre follows the site boundary and delimits areas for outdoor activity. The symbolism of architecture as a processional passage underlines the meaning and function of the building. It begins with the public space in front of the church, continues along the walkway next to the covered outdoor space (with the inserted community centre), all the way to the back porch incorporating the remnants of the old stone wall. The community centre itself has variable layout options, a masonry load bearing structure, and larch shingle cladding. Building the Lidečko Parish Centre was a collective effort and the whole parish participated both financially and manually.