(In)formal:neighborhood workshop on the creation of house signs

In the former workers’ colony of Divišova in Brno,on the small square, a neighborhood workshop on the creation of house signs took place. During one day, residents gathered around a table and shared their stories and memories that they have in the neighborhood. Divišova čtvrt’, called Shanghai, is a settlement in Brno, in the Brno-North district, which originated as a emergency temporary housing for the working clas from the nearby Královopolska engineering factory.The idea of informal housing with village structure in the city becomes an interesting place for tourists to take a trip out of the center. But for people coming to the see this colony for the first time, without any knowledge of its past and history, is very difficult to orientate themselves in the area.

The house sign, as an artwork on the building facades, historically represented a captured memory of a place, a fictional identities of the people who lived there or helped with the orientation in the city. A painting or sculpture place on the outside of a building, most often above the entrance, is closely linked to the house, represents its identity and gives the house some name. The house signs thus belongs to the artworks in everyday life.

The workshop was created in cooperation with the Faculty of Architecture in Brno, with architect Savka Marenić and curator Petra Šebová. Event was an accompanying programme of the year-long exhibition project of the Faculty of Architecture, whose dramaturgy focused on the reflection of public space in the city and the physical displacement of events outside the boundaries of the institution.

Workshop was held by Sacka Marenic and Petra Šebová
Publication