It is a lovely township outside our planned route. It is where the wedding of our good friends Jan and Tereza is taking place. To justify the detour, we contact the mayor of Louňovice pod Blaníkem to offer our services during the planned visit. She welcomes this initiative and confirms there is work for us to do. When the wedding celebrations are over, our colleagues Tomáš Feistner and Pavla Krásová join us for the discussions with the locals and authorities. The central square seems to be number one priority. The large asphalt surface in question is not a square after all, it feels like an area of pavement with a little grass island in the middle. The traffic is chaotic, there is no system in parking and one finds some sort of a terminal bus station in the midst of all this. It is hard to understand where to walk, which way to drive and where the road ends. The space in front of the castle and the church is somehow randomly decorated with plants. We work on the revitalization for more than a week, set our base in the castle garden and try to give advice to the local scouts on how to take care of the surroundings of the lovely castle, where we see a great potential. The renovation process has been under way till today. In this project, we will turn the flat paved area into a square again. The mayor seems to resonate with the project. Apparently the square has been renovated – in a slightly different way – without implementing the interlocking pavement and the boar decoration
We arrived in Louňovice where friends of Kateřina and Adam were celebrating their wedding. Our work with MAK initiated at the public pool and we decided to set up the base with them in a lovely castle garden of this village. We used one of the party tents from the wedding to transform it into our office. There was a regular gathering of hornets by the strip light above our heads to keep us company. By later that night, we slowly realized that the goulash from last night would keep us busy running back and forth from the drawing board to the toilette. The mayor of Lounovice briefed us: ,,It is the main square that is a bit tricky. Do what you can.“ We quickly analyzed the way things worked here. We learned that the building at the bottom of the square is owned by the Farming Cooperative, which means that a tractor with a flatbed needs to fit in there. We also learned that the upper pub is the “posh” one but there is something to the one further down as well. We were told it was most important not to intervene with the bushes surrounding the memorial, of course. Shopping is made at the local Cooperative grocery shop in the upper part of the square where stands with handmade products are seasonally displayed, too. In a couple of days, we came with the final proposition which reflected all factors mentioned above. Its main forte was the large open space in the middle, with the image of the locally popular boar paved with stones of a different color. On the day of the handover, Adam started the car in order to start the printer to then be able to print out the A3 layouts of our proposal. We showed everything to the mayor, explained in detail and, most importantly, emphasized the importance of the entire initiative. She patiently nodded and was delighted how very beautiful this all was. Finally she reassured us that she would push this project with the boar through, as soon as the town hall repays the loan taken for the sewage system in the next decade.
Tomáš Feistner, Pavla Krásová – guests colleagues
