Potřeba kvalifikovaně pečovat o podobu veřejného prostoru Ostravy vedla před více než třemi lety ke zřízení Městského ateliéru prostorového plánování (MAPPA). Ateliér nyní přichází s důležitým dokumentem Koncepce městské třídy 28. října – Opavská, který nastavuje celkový směr rozvoje a určuje, jak v Ostravě efektivně provádět velké investice v této lokalitě.

For the Slovak National Gallery building, a thorough renovation was long overdue—at least since the 2001 emergency closure of the exhibition space in the Bridging, a 1970s extension by architect Vladimír Dedeček connecting two opposite wings of the Gallery. Another part of the Gallery, the permanent exhibition this time, was closed off in 2012 due to inadequate conditions for the artwork. Finally, the library and the offices were shut down that same year. The renovation reconnects the disrupted functional relations, both inside the complex and with the neighbouring public areas. The main entrance axis from the old building’s courtyard is reaffirmed in the current layout, while a new axis, generated by Dedeček’s orthogonal grid, connecting the Gallery with the city centre, is integrated. Natural pedestrian paths are allowed to enter the ground floor and the courtyard. The Gallery becomes an open and welcoming institution.

This issue of ERA21 was originally meant to focus on Zoological Gardens. As summarised in the introduction text, different impulses led to us shifting our field of interest away from these places of worldly entertainment of looking into limited animal enclosures. The abstract act of erasing boundaries between people and wild animals crossed the popular glass divides of zoo exhibits. Animals range free now, in their natural territories—though these are greatly diminished due to human activity. And ERA21 is looking at ways of expanding these territories again, physically as well as semantically. It strives for emancipation from the subordination to the anthropocentric approach to the environment and for the discovery of new ecologies of interspecies coexistence. As it turns out, rewilding doesn't have to end in regression, instead it can stimulate a fascinating transgression.