The Public Escapades project allows people to discover hidden parts of Trenčín through interactive installations and playful architectural interventions in public spaces. This adventurous project connects the history and the present of the city. The natural environment around the Váh river inspires the design of the individual interventions, which combine architecture, design and a multi-genre programme. The project creates new spaces for spending time in nature, public gatherings and interactive activities.
A series of four objects situated along the Váh River may evoke creatures washed ashore. Through their distinctive forms and spatial configurations, they offer visitors a unique perspective on the surrounding environment, while their curved geometry responds to the subtle topography of the riverside landscape.
The organic geometry refers to freshwater bivalves living in the riverbed substrate, while the individual objects explore, through architectural means, the complex form of the shell and the possible processes through which it is formed. They evoke natural processes of ring-like layering, growth, and transformation, as well as a variety of textures and surfaces in the form of intertwined, knotted, glossy, or scaly structures.
The objects are jewels in the landscape, positioned somewhere between sculpture and park furniture. Their purpose is to activate the space and contribute to shaping its identity. Located in the revitalised area of the Alúvium Orechovského potoka, throughout 2026 the objects will host a programme focused on artistic interventions and collaborations, dance and theatre performances, and an educational programme exploring landscape architecture, design, and art, with an emphasis on community engagement and placemaking.
They can serve as an unconventional bench, an elevated platform, a lookout point, a stage, a climbing structure, or a lounger. They are open-ended additions to the environment, inviting further discovery and ever-new interpretations of how they can be used, without the typological constraints of conventional park furniture or predefined rules for its “correct” use.
The Unio Specus and Unio Pendet pavilions are located in the Alúvium area only temporarily. They were originally designed for the Trenčiansky luh site, where they will be relocated once the revitalisation of the area is complete.
The pavilion consists of a shell resting on several slender columns, constructed from wide metal strips that interweave radially to form a porous roof structure. The openings let light through, while the steel strips simultaneously function as shading louvers.
It is an imprint of Unio Tectum, together conceptually forming a closed shell. The roof thus becomes a seating object, expanding scale-like towards the edges at varying heights and densities, creating a playful space for sitting.
In this case, the shell is positioned vertically and functions as a backrest, screen, or partition. The contour-like growth is transformed into a digital parameter that generates varying densities, incorporating curved structural ribs.
The fourth object is a combination of the previous approaches to creating organic geometry. It employs the curving of slender profiles and regular reinforcement with ribs into a rounded form resembling a ring, with a subtle topography and an open space in the centre of the structure for various types of activities.
Installation: Remote Echoes
Location and time: Alúvium Orechovského potoka, 5–27 September 2026, 18:00–21:00
Artist: Mahalia Henry-Richards
Description: Remote Echoes is a site-specific installation that connects two nearby pavilions through a continuous dialogue of light and sound. A slow, synchronised pulse of light links the two structures, expressing a shared sense of presence. When visitors approach, the pulse becomes disrupted, revealing their influence as flickers and shifts in rhythm.
Each pavilion also listens to its surrounding environment, capturing short fragments of sound when activity occurs. These recordings form a slowly evolving soundscape, a spatial memory that drifts and reshapesover time.
Performance: Echoes Expanded
Location and time: Alúvium Orechovského potoka, 3–4 September 2026
Artist: Mahalia Henry-Richards
Description: Echoes Expanded is a performance event that transforms the subtle dialogue of Remote Echoes into an immersive audiovisual experience. Remote live code artists take control of the system in real time, using algorithmic music to animate both pavilions with sound and light. The quiet shared pulse is expanded into a vibrant and expressive event, amplifying the installation’s themes of presence, communication, and connection across distance.
Installation: Just Being
Location and time: Alúvium Orechovského potoka, 3 September 2026 – 31 August 2027
Artist: Katarína Poliačiková
Collaboration: Dionýz Troško
Description: Just Being is a site-specific installation that invites passers-by to become present – in this place, at this moment. The state of “just being” is something many of us long for, yet it can be difficult to attain. The Alúvium, however, can offer precisely this experience: to pause in silence and take a deep breath, to watch the flowing river and listen to the rustling of the trees overhead. The installation freely develops the idea behind the pavilions created by the WOVEN collective as part of the Escapes in Space project. Just Being is also one of 306 small joys collected and published by Katarína Poliačiková under the title The Ministry of Small Joys. Perhaps it is the most fundamental joy we can allow ourselves.
The opening of the Just Being installation will include a performative reading that will further explore the idea behind the installation and the Alúvium environment.
