Slovak architect to speak at Jan. 30 webinar

Slovakia and the United States are separated by thousands of miles.  Slovak architect Lenka Petráková is hoping to make the waters that have historically connected us – the world’s oceans – a cleaner place.  

Petráková has designed The 8th Continent a “floating station restores the marine environment's balance by collecting plastic debris from surface and breaking it down to recyclable material. It connects the ocean plastic recycling centre with a research and education facility.”

The station’s unique floral design recently earned an architectural award from the Jacques Rougerie Foundation of France, a non-profit that “encourages boldness and innovation in architectural undertakings as well as artistic creation relatd to sea and space in order to bring out the next Leonardo da Vinci, Jules Verne, Gustave Eiffel, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier of the 21st Century.”

From her office in London, Petráková will share more about her work as CGSI celebrates global innovation in architecture by Slovaks and Czechs at a webinar on Saturday Jan. 30.  CGSI will highlight the acocmplishments of three giants of the profession who respectively made an impact in 19th Century America (Leopold Eidlitz), China in the 1920s (Laszlo Hudec) and in the Caribbean of the early 20th Century (Antonin Nechodoma)..

Journey with us across the seas to unique tropical Prairie School homes in Puerto Rico, to the first skyscrapers in the commercial heart of pre-Communist Shanghai and to the historic sidewalks of New York. See our home page for sign up details.   

Petráková studied architecture at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Her proposed ocean cleaning station consists of five parts:

• A Barrier to collect waste and harvest tidal energy
• A Collector, where waste is sorted, biodegraded and stored
• A Research and Education Centre to study and showcase aquatic environments
• Greenhouses where plants are grown, and water is desalinated
• Living Quarters with support facilities