Exhibiting

Czech and Slovak Spatial Practice for 99%

How to create spaces that truly reflect the needs of the communities concerned. The exhibition offers a view of what spatial practice can mean for the so called 99%, reading space as a living entity made of buildings, social connections, rules, and daily rituals. A record of contemporary Czech and Slovak initiatives, and a call for planning that is inclusive and equitable rather than shaped around the most privileged one percent.

Curators and research authors: Lýdia Grešáková, Zuzana Tabačková

From the opening of the exhibition, © Lukáš Skála & Občina 2025

Teaching

Guest lectures

In the past years, she has given guest lectures and crits on methodology, urban sociology, and feminist spatial practices at various institutions, including the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She regularly co-teaches Sociology at Comenius University in Bratislava.

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Writing & Editing

Staying with the Trouble: Feminist Spatial Practices and Hybrid Agency in Slovakia and the Czech Republic

Article, Dimensions. Journal of Architectural Knowledge.

Read the article

Writing & Editing

Drawing common futures: with mapping workshops and images towards climate caring spatial practice in Slovakia

Book chapter, with Viktória Mravčáková. In: Renner, Dietzsch, Tschoepe, Käser, Balzan (eds.), Participatory Images: Fostering Dialogue Through Image Making in the Context of Urban Planning. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.

Writing & Editing

Housing in Times of Crisis

Edited volume and book chapter, with Viktória Mravčáková (eds.). Košice: Spolka.

Get the book

Teaching

Architecture and Methods of Fieldwork

MA course at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, co-taught with architect Viktória Mravčáková (Spolka, EKA) on fieldwork in architecture and planning. The course covered ethnography, critical mapping, deep listening, and participatory methods, emphasizing context, knowledge subjectivity, and power relations in shaping space.

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CoordinatingWriting & Editing

Nine Years with the Plan for Košice

Spolka //Spolka's longest running project, the new Košice zoning plan, led with Spolka and shaped along the way by many of the people it concerns. The first project of this scale in Slovakia where residents had a genuine voice, showing that participation is about expertise, trust, creativity, and respect for different views, not good PR. Led project management, consulted and facilitated participation over the years, and at the end prepared and edited the accompanying book, Plán pre Košice 2014 to 2025, on how to use the new plan.

Plán pre Košice  ·  Watch the video  ·  Read the book

Plán pre Košice, © Tibor Czitó 2025

Speaking

Feminist urban design from the periphery

Online lecture, Videogram platform. Presented feminist spatial practice and context specific approaches, showing how perspectives from the periphery of planning can address the climate crisis. The Videogram series, active since 2009, archives over one hundred forty recorded lectures.

Watch the lecture

Speaking

Interpreters of the more than human world? Spatial practice for the 99%

Conference talk. 9th Brno Conference of Urban Studies, Masaryk University, 23 May 2024.

More about the conference

Speaking

Spaces for the 99%: mapping feminist planning culture in Slovakia and the Czech Republic

Conference talk, with Zuzana Tabačková. Women designing and planning for social equality, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur, 28 June 2024.

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Speaking

Never Never School for the Living Summer School

Spolka //Conference talk, with Viktória Mravčáková. Living Summer School conference, Kortrijk, 5 September 2024.

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ResearchingExhibiting

Restart: Transformations in Modern Housing Estates, Tallinn Architecture Biennale

Spolka //Participated with the Spolka collective, showing artistic research on common spaces in housing estates through interviews, ethnography, photography, and architecture. A book of the same title was launched at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where she also gave a public talk. Chapter: Laundry Room, Stroller Room, Meeting Room: Socialist Housing Through the Prism of Caring Architecture.

9. 10. 2024 to 16. 10. 2024, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn

More about the biennale

From the exhibition at the Biennale in Estonia, © Spolka 2024

Exhibiting

Liberated Space: Care, Architecture, Feminism

Spolka //The first exploration of feminist architecture within the Czechoslovak context. Spolka presented a participatory installation based on the work of the Never Never School, including a research diary, a hand sewn textile photo book of learning spaces, and a participatory tablecloth. Other exhibitors included Architektky, Woven, and Emília Rigová.

21. 9. 2023 to 28. 4. 2024, Bratislava City Gallery. Curators: Petra Hlaváčková, Nicole Sabella

More about the exhibition

Coordinating

Klíma ťa potrebuje (Climate Needs You Slovakia)

Spolka //Consulting, designing, and facilitating regional meetings for the youth NGO.

From facilitations, © Monika Kováčová 2022

Coordinating

Year of Climate Care: Unconference with Educators

Spolka //Co-designed and co-facilitated. Spolka (2022), We the Educators. Tools for learners and teachers with climate care, in Year of Climate Care.

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Coordinating

Climate Care Academy

Spolka //Designed and facilitated. City, Climate Refugees and Architecture: Acknowledging New Roles, New Professions and Old Professions That Matter, in Year of Climate Care.

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Researching

Places in Slovakia and the Czech Republic: the reality of new, feminist forms of their creation

Research supported by public funding from the Slovak Arts Council. Research supervisors: Mária Beňačková Rišková, Adriana Jesenková, Zuzana Tabačková, Angela Million.

CoordinatingResearching

Project management and participatory process in MÚSES+

Spolka //The city of Veľký Šariš initiated a project on the Local Territorial System of Ecological Stability with added social value. Led an interdisciplinary expert team, co-designed workshops, and facilitated public engagement. The resulting strategic document, the first of its kind in Slovakia, links ecology with urban planning and tourism, with direct participation from over three hundred locals.

More about the project

ResearchingWriting & EditingExhibiting

Mestometer (City Meter)

Spolka //An interdisciplinary project combining urbanism, art, game design, and sociology in a playful exhibition on land use planning from the local perspective in Košice. Co-edited a bilingual publication: Playing Mestometer: Why Do Cities Need a Zoning Plan? Košice: CIKE, Spolka.

Watch the video

From Mestometer video, © Samuel Velebný 2021

Researching

Envisioning possible futures through sound mapping: House of Culture Družba

Part of sound artist Ján Solčáni's project. Led the ethnographic team and designed a mapping exercise for sound and photography artists exploring the abandoned Družba cultural house in Levice. Wrote speculative texts on the site's futures in 2030 and 2050, drawing on feminist, political, and ecological theory.

Lecture by Ján Solčáni

ResearchingSpeaking

Spatial practices from the margins

Conference talk preceded by collaborative independent qualitative research, with Zuzana Tabačková. Urban Movements and Local Politics in CEE Countries: Recent Developments and Conceptual Ambivalences, CEFRES, Prague and online, 5 November 2021.

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ResearchingExhibiting

Košice ±40°C: who, what, and how will be most affected by climate extremes

Spolka //Part of a participatory project for the city's Adaptation Strategy, involving experts, companies, institutions, and locals. Contributed sociological research and, as one of the curators, co-developed playful elements, wrote accessible texts, and moderated events. Set in a greenhouse inspired space with drought resistant plants and video projections.

17. 9. 2020 to 2. 10. 2020, Východoslovenská galéria Košice. Curatorial team Spolka+: Lýdia Grešáková, Katarína Onderková, Zuzana Tabačková

More about the exhibition

Exhibition Košice ±40°C, who, what and how will be most affected by climate extremes, © Spolka 2020

Writing & Editing

Mapping with Care as an Outline for Post-neoliberal Architecture Methodologies: Tools of the Never Never School

Article, with Zuzana Tabačková and Zuzana Révészová. Architektúra & Urbanizmus 54 (1 to 2): 6 to 19.

Writing & Editing

Mapping the In-Between. Interdisciplinary Methods for Envisioning Other Futures

Edited volume, with Zuzana Tabačková and Spolka (eds.). Košice: Spolka.

Researching

Institute of Urban and Regional Planning, TU Berlin

Research posting: Mapping for Change? Critical cartography approaches to drive socio-environmental urban transformations; Critical Mapping in Municipalist Movements; The Spatial Knowledge of Children and Young Adults and its Application in Planning Contexts. Research supervisors: Angela Million, Andreas Brück, Katleen De Flander, Natasha Aruri, Anna Juliane Heinrich.

CoordinatingResearchingTeaching

Never Never School

Spolka //A space for dialogical learning, utopian speculation, and research about cities, run by the wider Spolka team, of which she is one part. Since 2018, Spolka has been building an international platform for people and teams working across artistic, design, and social disciplines, using design as a tool for investigation, imagination, and dialogue about possible futures. It also serves as an incubator, with participants developing projects embedded in the Košice context. Within the team, her role has included project management, consulting, teaching, exhibiting, publishing, and fundraising.

2023, Housing in Times of Crisis: strategies and changing stereotypes of how housing is perceived.
2021, Caring Cities: interdisciplinary symposium around care in the Czechoslovak context.
2019, Mapping the In-between: critical mapping of the river Hornád area.
2018, Urban dialogue with the post-socialist city: utopian scenarios for the Ťahanovce housing estate.

Watch the short film  ·  More about the school

Never Never School, © Laura Véberová 2023