year: 2023
place: Brno
collaboration: Petra Šebová, Faculty of Architecture in Brno (VUT)
In the former workers’ colony of Divišova in Brno, a neighborhood workshop dedicated to creating house signs took place on a small (non) public square. Residents were invited by letter to gather around a shared table and exchange stories and memories of the area. Divišova čtvrť, locally known as “Shanghai,” is a settlement in Brno-North that originated as emergency temporary housing for workers from the nearby Královopolská engineering factory. The workshop sought to reflect on the identity of the current community and to create a new, collective atlas of the place through imaginative house signs.
Historically, house signs — artworks placed on building façades — captured the memory of a site, expressed a fictional or symbolic identity of its inhabitants, and helped orient people within the city. Often installed above entrances as paintings or small sculptural elements, they became closely tied to the life of a building, giving it a name and a distinct character.
The workshop was developed in collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture in Brno, with architect Savka Marenić and curator and architect Petra Šebová. It formed part of the accompanying programme of a year-long exhibition project organised by the Faculty of Architecture, whose dramaturgy focused on reflecting on public space and relocating events beyond the institutional setting into the urban environment. The house signs were created from recycled polystyrene sourced from a reuse centre in Prague.
Residents of the former workers' colonies were invited to the workshop by direct letters and postcards.
plan of the mapped houses
photos, copyright to ©Petra Šebová