About Andres
Prague Architect and Guide
I am Andres Parra Ordonez, an architect whose work and life have moved between Bogotá, Sydney and Prague.
For more than 30 years, I have worked with buildings, cities and the complex relationship between design and everyday life.
Prague taught me to look beyond monuments. Its character lives equally in passages, courtyards, tram routes, shifting light and the traces left by different eras. Architektura Playground Praha grew from my desire to share this layered city through an architect’s eyes.
These walks and stories are invitations to slow down, notice and read the city differently— not as a fixed collection of landmarks, but as a living conversation between architecture, memory and people.
The Method of a Prague Architect and Guide
My method begins with attention—not only with looking, but with engaging all the senses. We listen to the rhythm of streets and trams, notice the aromas of gardens, materials and cafés, experience local tastes, and feel texture, temperature, scale and movement. Observation becomes part of a richer, embodied encounter with place.
Perception is never neutral. Each of us experiences a city through our own life, memories and lessons, filtered through cultural, moral and behavioural paradigms. Rather than ignoring these filters, I invite visitors to recognise them and consider how they shape what we notice, value and remember.
Architectural knowledge then connects these sensory and personal impressions to a wider story: design movements, political change, local customs and the ambitions of different generations. A façade is never only a façade; it becomes evidence of the people and ideas that shaped it.
Sketching and photography are also central to this process. They are more than forms of documentation: they are individual acts of interpretation—ways of selecting, framing and expressing what a place means to us at a particular moment.
The aim is not to prescribe a single reading of Prague, but to awaken curiosity and provide the tools for each person to form their own relationship with the city.