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For the H2020 project OpenHeritage we are visiting six observatory cases to conduct in depth research and visual documentation of unique heritage reuse projects in Europe. Our first stop was „Stará Tržnica“, the Old Market Hall of Bratislava in Slovakia. Since our visit in Bratislava, we were elaborating our case study and preparing short-documentary-videos. Before we launch them, we wanted to share with you the story behind our research and some pictures from the site.
For the past five years, we have been exploring Europe’s most innovative practices that developed new economic models for community initiatives. It was in this research that we first encountered Stará Tržnica in Bratislava. We incorporated this great example of a community-run historical market hall in our recent publication Funding the Cooperative City. The market is also one of the 16 key cases in our research project OpenHeritage. A few days after our shooting in Bratislava, Matus Vallo, one of the founders of the NGO, was elected mayor of Bratislava. It’s a joy to be so close to such developments in Europe. We look forward to a civic-professional alliance running a major European capital.
The aim is to explore the business and governance models behind community-run examples of heritage-reuse, analyse these models and share them with a broader public. We are producing case studies as well as videos, in order to distribute successful regeneration models for heritage sites, which involve and benefit the local communities.
Urbanist Levente Polyak and filmmaker Yilmaz Vurucu visited the Stará Tržnica in Bratislava to conduct an in-depth research about the project. Bratislava’s Old Market Hall belongs to the municipality. The NGO “Old Market Hall Alliance” rents it for a symbolic one euro per year, but they have to invest monthly 10,000 euros in the building. Their business model is based on the combination of commercial events with social and non-commercial activities.
Gabor Bindics is co-founder of the “Old Market Hall Alliance”. In the video he describes the key elements of the Stará Trznica model. Illah van Oljen explains the initial motivations and ways of involving the communities in the process. Jan Mazur the legal expert of the “Old Market Hall Alliance” elaborates on the legal and economic logic of the Market Hall’s operation.
The video series will shortly be launched by the OpenHeritage consortium. We will announce the screening details here. For the time being, the films are available upon request. Feel free to contact us for more details and stay tuned.
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