RELOADING MACHNAČ

Here we examine spatial relationships, functional trajectories, and the ways built forms are embedded in their terrain. The sanatorium actively choreographs how one moves, arrives, rests, and looks at the surrounding valley. We explore how the complex organises circulation and access, how it frames natural features such as slopes, views, and vegetation, and what forms of social hierarchy or care are inscribed in its layout. The topological layer helps reveal how modernism shaped both space and behaviour.

This layer deals with bodily perception, atmosphere, and sensory experience. The sanatorium’s medical purpose shaped its daily choreography: silence, light, ventilation, and spatial openness influenced how the body felt and moved through the environment. We consider how users experienced recovery, rest, and routine, and how these sensory qualities may have contributed to the healing process. Today, in its partial ruin, the site evokes new emotional and aesthetic responses—mixing openness with fragility, care with abandonment.

 We approach Machnáč as a place of memory shaped by trauma, nostalgia, and layered forgetting. Once a proud symbol of progress, the sanatorium now stands between decay and the possibility of renewal, gathering stories of use, loss, and revived interest. We explore the politics of memory that surround it: who remembers Machnáč, how, and why? New narratives—emerging from civic activism, artistic interventions, and heritage debates—are slowly reshaping its meaning and may one day influence its future.

This dimension explores how modernist architecture projected visions of utopia, hygiene, transparency, and social order. Machnáč embodied ideas about a healthier, more open society—and these ideals were built directly into its structure. We ask what ideologies were embedded in the sanatorium and how these meanings are transformed or contested today. Is the ruined state an inevitable consequence of a failed modernism, or could it be reversed, making functionalist architecture loved again?

One game board for the team.
The board has 15 separate spaces where situation cards are placed during the game.
Cards of safeguards: 5 cards - Architect, Ecologist, Visitor, Warden, Curator
Guardian decision cards: 15 sets of 3 cards for each player (green, orange, blue).
These are personal cards that players use to ‘vote’ for the type of action they choose in response to a situation in the landscape. Each guardian has their own set, marked with a corresponding symbol. The guardian's symbol is indicated on the guardian card.
Situation cards: 15 cards (3 situations for each landscape).
Destiny cards: 30 cards with ‘events’ that change the course of the game and do not depend on the team's decisions.
Decision and consequence tokens: mark the selected type of action for the landscape or record the accumulation of negative/positive/neutral events.

Each player takes on one of five guardian roles: architect, ecologist, visitor, warden, or curator. You react to a series of 15 situations — cracks in facades, pressure from developers, memory loss, disputes about authenticity. In each round, you discuss the problem, vote with decision cards, and see the consequences on the game board.

The game does not provide clear-cut answers — but it forces you to choose. The building may survive or disappear, become a brand or remain a painful symbol. And all this is the result of your decisions, compromises, and silences.

The game has a shared playing field with five landscapes, 15 situation cards that are laid out sequentially, and a deck of random events. Each player has a set of three decision cards (green, blue, red) and their own role.

After each vote, tokens appear on the field — they record not only the decision made, but also its consequences. At the end of the game, the team calculates the balance between intervention, compromises, and lost meanings to understand in which scenario the sanatorium “survived.”