To school on foot and safely: Sutnarka students design wayfinding signage for Prague 12

Signage to make children's walk to Angel Elementary easier was created for the Prague 12 district by students from the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art at UWB. If the pilot solution proves successful, Prague 12 plans to extend similar improvements to other locations as well.

In the housing estate environment of Prague's Modřany district, which can be difficult for newcomers to navigate, many parents regularly decide each morning to drive their children as close to the school as possible. The result is increased traffic on surrounding streets and long queues of cars. The new wayfinding signage, designed and created together with children by students from the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art, aims to make the walking route clearer and, above all, encourage its use.

Barbora Burianová created the design of the wayfinding signage from the Didactic Illustration studio and Filip Horák, a graduate of the Painting studio. Burianová worked with clean geometric shapes, composing figures and hopscotch caterpillars from them, while Horák drew inspiration from dandelions, vines, and other plant motifs.

"Even while we were creating it, we were getting kind and enthusiastic reactions from passersby—we could see how the paintings naturally invited interaction, especially from children, but from adults too. As it happened, foreign interns at Angel Elementary made use of it right away, exactly as intended—as a marked route from the tram stop to the school," said architect Eva Rybníčková, coordinator of participatory planning for the Prague 12 district, adding: "We're planning similar signage and pavement games in other parts of the Modřany housing estate, to encourage children to walk from the main road to their schools."

Children from Angel Elementary School also got involved, transferring the designs directly onto the pavements. "We greatly value our collaboration with the Sutnar Faculty and students Bára and Filip. Their professional approach to developing the designs, along with their help during implementation, elevated the whole project to a level comparable with the best examples of tactical urbanism, both abroad and in the Czech Republic. We look forward to further collaboration," Eva Rybníčková concludes.

Students from the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art take part every year in projects commissioned by public administration bodies, private companies, and non-profit organizations. The Safe Route to Angel Elementary project connects its work with a concrete brief from the public space and shows how visual communication can help improve orientation in everyday situations.