The installation was part of the festival in the Kukucka public space in Ostrava.
More and more often in larger cities we encounter „hostile architecture” or – as its creators call it – „defensive architecture”. Controversial benches are designed to make it difficult to lie down on them. This procedure aims to get the homeless out of the picture.
From the perspective of a homeless person, the city serves as a „home”, where a bench becomes a bed, a store becomes a refrigerator, the station becomes a living room, and a fountain becomes a bathroom.
Chronic homelessness is often caused by very serious mental problems
The fight against homelessness should not be about fighting homeless people, but about the causes of this problem. What the authorities are doing are only aesthetic changes.
That’s why I designed the City Living Room so that the benches would have a more homely character, encourage relaxation and counteract „exclusive architecture”.
At first, I planned it on the benches in the square on Zborovska Street, surrounding the Koupel sculpture made by Ladislav Martínek in 1962.
However, together with the organizers, we had to find another place because we did not receive permission from the authorities – with the explanation that the city had been fighting homeless people in the city center for a long time and that my project went against their efforts to evict the homeless from the city center.
Ultimately, we managed to find another place in the center, but the whole situation made me believe that the problem was big and big.
So my mother and I sewed these covers because the topic is very close to us. The effects of the action can be seen in Ostrava
