AUF Lectures: Vladan Klement

Rethinking What We “Ought to Do”: Buzzwords, Dogmas and Hidden Power(lessness)

Contemporary urban planning and the design of public space are full of supposedly foolproof solutions and noble concepts. Words such as “egalitarianism”, “sustainability”, “community” and “participation” sound wonderful, but they are often used as lofty terms without precise definitions. The result is a sense that architecture has certain things one “ought to do” for a project to be acceptable at all. But what happens when these concepts become dogma?

In this lecture, we will examine buzzwords in architecture and urban planning and try to rethink them. We will discuss phenomena such as “green roofs you simply must have”, explore the “religion of the bicycle” and consider why even efforts to create a 15-minute city or involve the public in every decision may not always be well-intentioned. We will focus on how concepts such as “safety” and “sustainability” are often reduced to narrow meanings and used to justify elitist visions. We will show how urban design can function as a symbolic barrier and an instrument of power, creating an illusion of safety.

Expect a critical—and at times downright sarcastic—philosophical look at seemingly positive concepts: an exploration of what lies behind them and, most importantly, a search for whether there is still room for a city without constant moralising from a position of authority.

Vladan Klement is a philosopher of the city working at the Faculty of Architecture of the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the ethics and political dimensions of public space. Combining irony with philosophical depth, he analyses contemporary approaches to urban planning.

AUF Lectures

This lecture series is organised by AUF, the student association at the Faculty of Art and Architecture, Technical University of Liberec (FUA TUL). It aims to explore architecture and public space from perspectives that allow us to step outside established disciplinary approaches for a moment and discover new ways of seeing them.
The series is supported by a PPSŘ 2026 grant at the Technical University of Liberec.