The little hill in the town hall yard. FA students designed and built an exhibition pavilion in Vimperk

The printing empire that Johannes Steinbrener gradually built up distributed its book production practically all over the world. In addition to the printing press itself, he ran all the necessary associated production and made a significant contribution to the physical form of the city through his building activities. As a socially-minded industrialist, he cared not only for his employees, but also for the poor through his systematic charity work, providing them with food and medical care. In 1945 the family was exiled and the company was nationalised.

Today, the town of Vimperk wants to start repaying its social moral debt. It has decided to breathe new life into the site in the form of a regional social and cultural centre. The shape of the area in the historic centre itself will emerge from an architectural competition. The intervention, in the form of a temporary pavilion, is intended to serve as an exhibition space for the competition entries, but at the same time recalls the industrialist's legacy.

The central idea of the ZAN Čančík-Sticzay project was to work with space. A complex assignment was created that dealt with a specific functional program, conceptual and artistic content, space and construction. The design, which during the work was nicknamed "the hill", was implemented together during the May workshop. The result was a 10.5 m long, 3 m wide and 4 m high wooden building. A gallery corridor opens up in front of the visitor entering the courtyard of the town hall, where the competition designs will be installed. At the end of the gallery, one can exit just before the wall's edge, walk around the building and ascend a ramp to the observation deck, which allows both a symbolic look back into a window of the past (period depictions of work in the Steinbrener Printing House installed directly into its boarded-up window) and a new perspective of the view of the surrounding area. A bench runs the length of the building, providing a place for rest and contemplation.

Temporary exhibition pavilion and memorial of Johann Steinbrener in Vimperk

Authors

Management: Josef Čančík, Sebastian Sticzay

Students: Danil Bagrov, Dominika Dardová, Veronika Syslová

Implementation team

Construction masters: Josef Čančík, Sebastian Sticzay

Construction crew: Danil Bagrov, Dominika Dardová, Adam Doksanský, Jindřich Osolsobě, Vojtěch Prockert, Kamil Renčo, Veronika Syslová, Aněžka Tvrzová, Eliška Vrbová