Architecture Day 2026 – I live, therefore I am

The PLAC Association cordially invites you to the 15th annual Architecture Day festival in Jablonec nad Nisou, subtitled ‘I live, therefore I am’:

16:30 – 18:00 / guided walk: Affordable urban housing – meet in front of the town hall entrance

A guided walk from the town centre via Neptun to Bezručovka, exploring both existing and planned municipal housing stock, led by members of the PLAC association and the City Architecture Office. This historic tenement block, set amongst the neoclassical buildings of the city centre, dates from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a period of Jablonec’s greatest expansion. The former Neptun hostel and hotel, built in the 1970s, is to be converted into rental accommodation following its purchase by the city. The site of the former children’s hospital on Petra Bezruče Street, built in the 1930s as a maternity hospital and postnatal care centre, is set to be converted into a municipal block of flats. Three different approaches to municipal housing, its management and future use. The programme focuses on the affordability of housing, the social dimension of housing policy and the city’s role in finding solutions to current housing needs.

In line with this year’s Architecture Day motto , ‘I live, therefore I am’, we have, in collaboration with the Strategic Planning Department and the Housing Contact Point, approached three people living in different circumstances – in a council flat, in a municipal hostel, and a person who is currently homeless. Each of them was given the opportunity to use photographs to capture their everyday life as they themselves perceive and experience it. This is not, therefore, an outside perspective, but their own view of the place where they live, everyday situations, and the people and things that form part of their lives. A selection of the photographs will be on display at the end of the walk at Bezručovka.

Guided by: members of the PLAC association and the City Architecture Office

18:30 / talk: Magdalena Havlová – Our House / Vladimír’s Serius bookshop

Architect and artist Magdalena S. Havlová will present her book *Our House*, which is the result of several years’ research into Czech rental housing architecture. Through historical and contemporary examples, she will offer a personal perspective on municipal and co-operative apartment blocks as one possible solution to the housing affordability crisis. The lecture and subsequent discussion will explore the transformations in rental housing, the thinking of architects, and ways to build on the fine traditions of urban housing in the current context.

The programme is organised in collaboration with the City Architecture Office, the Strategic Planning Department, the Housing Contact Point and Vladimír’s Serius bookshop, with financial support from the Czech Architecture Foundation and the statutory city of Jablonec nad Nisou.

The main organiser of the nationwide Architecture Day festival is the Kruh, z.s. association.