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The Aura light installation by designers Tomáš Kučera and Klára Janypková, echoes the Czech Design Week 2025 festival in Prague's Dvořák Embankment, which echoes the Czech Design Week 2025 festival in September, will come alive until Saturday, October 11, 2025. The exhibition was created in the City module by KOMA Modular and represents a new way of approaching contemporary Czech design and glass as a living medium for the general public. The project partner is the municipal company Trade Centre Prague (TCP).
“Aura” is made up of four vertical glass columns, each with its own character as well as the way it works with light. The cylinders are dull, but each is different — in their differences there is a subtle tension and harmony. Inside, there is a play of light evoking inner movement, energy and changeability. The installation invites to pause silently and to reflect on what emanates from a person to the outside -- and what remains hidden within. Lighting elements for installation prepared motion designer Andrej Kučera from the Design and Digital Technologies Studio UMPRUM.
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The work of Tomáš Kučera, who studied at the UMPRUM Glass Studio under the guidance of sculptor and designer Rony Plesl, has long been based on his work with glass sculpture, experimentation and a conceptual approach that crosses the line between art and design. “What fascinates me about glass is that one does not actually work with matter, but with light that passes through it,” says the author. It is in Aura that this principle is fully materialized — light here is not only a source of brightness, but a material that behaves like a living organism.
Interior and product designer Klára Janypková adds: “I see the city as a constantly changing scene. Aura responds to its surroundings — in the daytime it works with natural light, in the evening it becomes a luminous body that breathes with the rhythm of the city.” Kučera and Janypková, apart from their independent work, also collaborate within the Monotropa brand and together design collections for the Květná 1794 glass brand.
The installation is located close to Parizská Street, the Kodl Contemporary gallery or the new Fairmont hotel, and its location naturally follows the cultural axis of the center of Prague. It is visible from both banks of the Vltava River and by evening it becomes a bright spot in the urban landscape. “Czech Design Week has been striving for design to penetrate beyond the classical exhibition spaces for a long time. Aura is a concrete fulfilment of this vision — it shows that contemporary design can live right on the streets of the city,” says Lukáš Pipek, artistic director of the Czech Design Week festival.
The outdoor exhibition Aura was created as an echo of this year's Czech Design Week festival, which ran from 11 to 14 September 2025 in the Mánes Exhibition Hall, Clam-Gallas Palace and Slavia Café, as well as in ten partner galleries and showrooms. The modular gallery on Dvořák's waterfront is also a follow-up to the Skydrift exhibition by glass artist František Jungvirt, which, as an echo of the Czech Design Week festival, ran until 1 October at the Clam-Gallas Palace. The partner of the exhibition is the Ploom brand, which supported the realization of works by Tomáš Kučera and Klára Janypková for the outdoor exhibition.
