Five years after carrying out the successful project for the 1ar(t) park for art and relaxation in 2012 (01-VP6), the gallery owner Zdeněk Sklenář took a similar approach to a project in Mariánská Street – the creation of a Zen garden as a refuge for art, creativity and relaxation. Once again, it was carried out in cooperation with Josef Pleskot, the author of the 1ar(t) design project. Sklenář purchased two building plots with garages and, in their place, created a geometrically laid out garden and occasional sculpture park theatrically linking up to the nearby Zdeněk Sklenář Gallery.
The complicated urban context of the space with its disparate neighbours on all four sides of the land (a single-storey townhouse, low historical wall, garage, and the adjoining street) became something of a welcome challenge for the architect. He had a creative effect on all four sides, somewhere less, somewhere more. To the left, on the full side facade of the house, he retained the light, relief “imprint” of the original building of the garage and reinstated an opening with a wooden gate (the opening had been previously bricked up), thus linking the premises up to the new spatial relationships with the Chateau Hill. Furthermore, to the right, a new, high wall was built on the border with the adjoining plot and garage. It was constructed out of old bricks and blocked the uninspiring view of the outbuilding, whilst also serving as a place for attaching spotlights illuminating the garden. The garden's border with the street remains purely symbolic, marked out with thin “columns” of rusted steel armature with wide gaps in between.
The designer divided the 164m2 garden into two precisely demarcated sections with different surfaces – white gravel and grass. The focus of the garden is precisely this gravel surface, divided by three pairs of concrete “bollards” on which visitors can realize their creativity and, in the spirit of Japanese dry gardens, can draw various patterns (e.g. with the help of a rake). The architect added only one woody plant to the “green” section of the plot – the Prunus padus Colorata.
