Did you know Košice before this visit?

Benjamin Bradňanský: Yes, we had been here three or four times, because we took part in two competitions here together with another office. One of them is now under construction: a shopping mall next to the main street. The other one was a Europan competition.

But neither of these projects had a relation with the river?

Benjamin Bradňanský: No.

What do you think about the choice of the river banks as the site for City Visions?

Benjamin Bradňanský: I thought it was bigger.

You thought that the river was bigger?

Benjamin Bradňanský: No, the site!

Lukáš Kordík: We already came up with some ideas and then realized that the site is too small for them. We thought that it didn't just cover the space between the railway line and the river, but rather between the highway and the river. So it turned out to be much narrower than we expected.That's a difficult situation. There are already some projects for this site, but there's no strong idea or vision. And it's difficult to develop one for such a narrow stretch of land.

That means that you don't just want to focus on the river banks but also on how the site relates to its surroundings?

Benjamin Bradňanský: Yes. Apparently the city of Košice is already thinking about links from east to west, but that's more about transport connections. Until now, all these connections stop in the west due to the rocky slopes behind the city.

Lukáš Kordík: We're quite fascinated by the isolation of all parts of this area. The centre is isolated, the housing settlements beyond the river are isolated, the river itself is isolated. In fact, we quite like these strong borders and would like to preserve them. It's not possible to create real transitions from east to west anyway because of these borders and the topography. That's a special characteristic of Košice, and the inhabitants are used to this situation. Maybe no connections are needed, maybe it's better to make the best of the isolation.

Benjamin Bradňanský: It's also a question of identity of the site. There is an identity, which doesn't necessarily need to be changed, but maybe just underlined.

But isn't this identity extremely fragmented?

Benjamin Bradňanský: Yes, that's what we also just realized... We thought that it was a single strip, but it turned out to be quite cut up. But that could also be an advantage.

Lukáš Kordík: The fact is: Košice is a fragmented city, so we have to consider what's good about this fragmentation. For a start, it makes it different from other cities.

The other city you work on for City Visions is Bordeaux. Do you think that there are parallels between the tasks in Bordeaux and Košice?

Lukáš Kordík: Well, the hills are the same...

Did you pick one of the suggested sites in Bordeaux?

Benjamin Bradňanský: No, we thought that we might make a more general suggestion. It's quite tough: we saw six sites in one afternoon, and at the end nobody remembered the first one. They were quite similar as well. Highway behind you, trees in front of you.

Lukáš Kordík: We still don't know on which scale to work, 1:1000 or 1:100. But we want to keep it quite general.

Benjamin Bradňanský: In Košice, we visited a lot of panel house settlements and found it interesting that most of them were created around former villages. It gives them a certain identity. The city officials said that the area called Džungla, for instance, doesn't have any qualities, but it has a special atmosphere.

Lukáš Kordík: What's good about the panel housing estates is that they're not ghettos. Under the communist regime, everybody was supposed to live in these estates, so there are intellectuals, there are workers, there are middle-class people. That's one thing that encourages us to treat the estates as islands, because there's no danger that they become ghettos.

The Belgian and Swiss teams were very fascinated by these large-scale housing estates. Do you think that that's something which distinguishes ther approach from yours?

Lukáš Kordík: Yes, because for us they're not fascinating, but just an everyday phenomenon.

Benjamin Bradňanský: I grew up in such an estate in Bratislava, but it's thirty times bigger than the ones in Košice. I know that identity can be a problem in these settlements, because people just can't identify with something as big as that. On the other hand, there was a lot of green in-between the buildings, which was good for children.

Lukáš Kordík: I think that the inhabitants often really like the public space, but they don't like the architecture.

But yesterday we were told by one of the lecturers that unused public space is the main problem in these areas.

Vít Halada: Well, one of the problems is that under the communist government, people were used to it that the state took care of everything. Now they're still waiting that somebody comes along and solves everything for them. This is where an architectural or urban plan could play a role and change the inhabitants' behaviour, also by creating a sense of identity.