Proposal for a statue of Marie Restituta

Visualization of proposal to competition to create Marie Restituta sculpture, Brno, 2023

The main idea of the whole proposal is the imaginary connection of the statue with the nearby birthplace of Maria Restituta in Husovice, Brno. The dimensions of the statue are based on the layout of the house where she spent the first years of her life under the name Marie Kafková. The sculpture maintains the house’s aspect ratio on a reduced scale to fit more into the park’s designated location. More than an accurately represented house, it should be a place where it is possible to hide from the surroundings and can thus serve as a kind of reflection, contemplation or shelter from the surrounding world. The walls are cut so as not to create a completely enclosed space, but to connect the monument with the park. The technology of 3D printed concrete is chosen for the reason that, in imagination, the individual layers resemble the layering of time. In the individual layers of concrete, we can see the events and life’s sorrows that Maria Restituta encountered during her life. The undulations of the walls and the fluid form of the house are reminiscent of certain twists, journeys and sufferings in her life. Two glass crosses are placed in the walls, which symbolize her devotion to faith and refer to the incident when she refused to remove the symbols of faith from the walls of the hospital and thus came into conflict with the Nazi authorities. The crosses in the walls are made of green glass, as a reference to Marie Restituta’s fondness for beer, the glass should remotely resemble bottle glass in color. The crosses are placed so that they can be seen in or out, and their translucence should allow the sun’s rays to penetrate through.

Technical solution:

The memorial consists of two L-shaped walls, which will be 3D printed from concrete. L shape measures: 4360mmX2630mm, wall thickness 100mm, each wall consists of 2 layers of print with a diameter of 50-70mm. Concrete foundations must be placed under the wall in strips 500 mm wide and 800 mm deep.