Košice ±40°C: Who, what and how will be most affected by the extremes of climate?

17.9. – 2.10.2020 | East Slovak Gallery, Košice

Košice ±40°C exhibition opened up space for joint reflection on the resilience of us and our city to the climate crisis in the present and in the near future. Through the simplified accessible presentation on the Vulnerability Assessment of the area of ​​Košice, we invite you to get to know better the places that are already threatened by extreme heat and floods.

Come with us to places where there is too much asphalt and too little greenery. To places where the extremes of the weather threaten important traffic arteries and where the most vulnerable of us assemble. Why? Because all this and much more affects the city's ecosystem and thus our daily lives and comfort.

Košice, as well as practically the whole of Slovakia, is in an area of ​​even more significant temperature rise than the global average. We all felt it. Lost “white winter” and sledding on Červený breh, faded sound of the birds, dried up century-old chestnut trees in front of our house, sold-out air-conditioning in shops, or crop losses in our gardens. That is why the City of Košice, like many of us, is starting to think about ways to face these changes together and prepare for the future. The first step in this effort is the creation and adoption of an Adaptation Strategy, which is being prepared for the city by the project of the same name as this exhibition — Košice ± 40°C. In order to minimize the consequences of the climate change, the project aims to increase preparedness for the coming changes and to involve in the creation of the Adaptation Strategy, in addition to a wide range of experts, companies, institutions, and you - the people of Košice.

The exhibition was a playful walk, but also called for a careful study of the complexity of the impacts of climate change on our city. Its content was created on the basis of data from the initial outputs of the project, which you will soon find on the project page Košice ± 40 ° C. Spolka graphically processed these outputs and created the concept of the exhibition so as to connect the various parts of the Vulnerability Assessment into one whole.

In addition to 2D printed media, the exhibition combined new (video) and old media (Meotar), which made the individual elements of the exhibition more accessible. These various formats helped to look at the information from multiple angles while allowing for varying degrees of interaction. The exhibition space itself was also atypical. The symbolism of the greenhouse that dominated the space, the number of different species of drought-loving plants, the use of warm tones of light - all this deepened the atmosphere and allowed for a moment to stop and perceive the integrity of the theme in its multiplicity with different senses. Because climate change is a complex, all-related and multi-layered reality.

The video of the Carpathian Development Institute explains what climate change is. The video was in an adapted form at the exhibition, in the original (longer) version you can watch it (in Slovak) at youtube.

Oversized graphic visualizes the main impacts of climate change on the city of Košice. According to the Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute, whose data are the basis for this graphic, extreme heat and torrential rains await us in Košice.

Both formats served as as entry into the theme of the exhibition. Thanks to the combination of video and drawing, in which you were able to discover scientific information in a playful way, the information provided became visually attractive, more memorable and generally more accessible.

You can buy the graphic in A3 format through our e-shop.

The construction of the symbolic greenhouse dominated the exhibition space. It evoked a reflection on the present ​​climate conditions, on the microclimate of spaces in the city and on the fact that by entering the greenhouse we are part of it all. On the walls of the symbolic greenhouse, you could find a spatial assessment of the city's vulnerability. This assessment shows how vulnerable our city is to the adverse effects of climate change. Košice is threatened by two impacts in particular: more frequent heat waves and surface floods caused by strong rains. Each of these impacts affects the city differently, hence, there are two evaluations. These resulting vulnerability assessments - two orange maps - are a summary of various factors that include social and physical aspects of the city. The individual factors are presented on 17 posters.

The assessment of vulnerability as well as cartographic data was prepared by the Carpathian Development Institute. The graphic design for the purposes of the exhibition was prepared by Spolka in cooperation with Katarína Štefanková.

A game in a form of a card to fill served as an aid to understanding how this complex vulnerability assessment works and what it includes. By simply filling in the card with data from each of the maps in the greenhouse, you have found out how and why the place where you live, where you study or work is vulnerable.

Meotar is an old school tool that was used before the data projectors. At the exhibition it allowed the visitors to combine various foils with maps printed on them, which were projected on the wall in an enlarged form using light. The visitors could easily look for relationships between factors that affect the vulnerability of the city.

Among the sheets with maps were also the results of participatory climate maps of the city of Košice, which you could compare with the maps of the scientific assessment of the city's vulnerability. These participatory climate maps are also available here online.

The participatory mapping of Košice and its evaluation were prepared by the architectural studio Atrium. The graphic design for the purposes of the exhibition was prepared by Spolka in cooperation with Katarína Štefanková.

How do people of Košice perceive the topic of climate was the subject of a questionnaire survey, which was attended by almost 1,600 people in the autumn of 2019. The results of the survey were presented through four differently vulnerable groups of people from Košice, which were created by cluster analysis. Where do you find yourself within this spectrum? Through this display, visitors discussed their own attitudes and experiences with adaptation to the climate crisis. At the same time, the graphic representations of these groups – in form of characters with quotes – accompanied the exhibition. Attentive visitors could find them on maps or in texts throughout the exhibition.

The survey was created and evaluated by experts from the Faculty of Economics of the Technical University in Košice in cooperation with Spolka.

Part of the questionnaire survey was also to find out who, according to the people of Košice, is doing something about the issue of adaptation to climate change. We also asked this question the visitors of the exhibition.

The atmosphere was completed by drought-resistant plants, which occur frequently in dry conditions.

The selection of plants, their descriptions as well as lending were provided by the Municipal Greenery Administration in Košice.

During the exhibition we also provided guided tours for primary and secondary schools, which we prepared in cooperation with Fridays for Future Košice.

Talk and discussion on the topic was also part of the program.

Košice ±40°C: Who, what and how will be affected by the extremes of climate the most?
17.9. - 2.10.2020
Curatorial team Spolka+: Lýdia Grešáková , Katarína Onderková, Zuzana Tabačková
Graphic collaboration: Katarína Štefanková
Data: Carpathian Development Institute
Other collaborators: Košice City, SHMÚ, Spolka, Správa mestskej zelene v Košiciach, Ekonomická fakulta Technickej univerzity v Košiciach, East Slovak Gallery, Fridays for Future Košice.

The author and manager of the project Košice ± 40°C with the official title “The public helps the local government to create Climatically Safer Košice” * own translation * is Carpathian Development Institute.

The project was supported under the Operational Program Effective Public Administration co-financed by the European Social Fund and ran from 2019-2021.