Competition
Results of the curatorial competition for the exhibition in the Polish Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice 2023
The Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Prof. Dr Hab. Piotr Gliński, approved on 10 November 2022 the winning project Datament (Układane) by curator Jacek Sosnowski, with Anna Barlik and Marcin Strzała, recommended by the competition jury for presentation at the Polish Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, 2023.
On 27 October 2022, the competition jury for the curatorial project of the exhibition in the Polish Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in 2023 convened at the Zachęta — National Gallery of Art. The jury, appointed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, comprised: Mateusz Adamkowski, Prof. Jerzy Bogusławski, Jarosław Denisiuk, Tadeáš Goryczka, Dominika Janicka, Dr Janusz Janowski, Agnieszka Kalinowska-Sołtys, Dorota Leśniak-Rychlak, Wojciech Mazan, Barbara Schabowska, Dr Hab. Inż. Arch. Bolesław Stelmach (Jury President), Prof. Dr Hab. Andrzej Szczerski (absent), Piotr Walkowiak. The jury selected the project Datament (Układane) by curator Jacek Sosnowski, with Anna Barlik and Marcin Strzała, as the winner from among a total of thirty-four submissions qualified for the competition, and issued the following statement:
We inhabit a post-digital reality that remains beyond our full comprehension, leaving us feeling lost and vulnerable. The future of architecture, which holds the wellbeing of generations to come in its hands, cannot be entrusted solely to algorithms. Cutting-edge technologies must not overlook the human aspect of shaping our spaces. The proposed installation seeks to confront us with impersonal, alienating grids of metal modules, forcing us to recognise the dangers of placing excessive faith in the parametric capabilities of algorithms.
‘Consequently, we place our trust in the logic of algorithms, which do not mirror our own cognitive processes. By generating distorted pathways for processing information, we risk constructing a distorted world’ — the project curators state in their description.
The selected project aims to highlight the idea that the human dimension is the single, definitive factor in the development of space.
A Place of Care, curated by Agnieszka Kacprzak and Iwona Kalenik, was chosen as the Reserve Project.
The project’s intentions resonate deeply with Martin Hägglund’s words: ‘Since everything we do and everyone we love will cease to exist, we are obligated to care’. Within the Polish Pavilion, the curators craft a multilayered narrative exploring the ‘caring sensitivity’ inherent in the spaces surrounding us. ‘This soothing narrative, which stands in stark contrast to the language of force, competition, hierarchy, and categorisation, may seem weak in its fragility. Yet, an ontological shift towards sensitive and caring inquiry (…) could be precisely what the world needs’. The exhibition, encompassing the floor and walls of the pavilion, offers a multi-dimensional, tactile, and sensory experience. It is neither a lapidarium nor a collection of natural fragments gathered from a beach or forest, but rather an assemblage of fragments from our lives. Stone, wood, plaster, metal — fragments of objects become vessels of emotion. Their seemingly random arrangements evoke the material samples an architect gathers in their studio during the construction of a house. The transformation of space is an act of care woven into the process; it is sensitive storytelling.
18th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia
20 May – 26 November 2023
curator: Lesley Lokko
theme: The Laboratory of the Future
https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2023
Poland’s participation in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice is funded by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
In accordance with the regulations, all designs accepted for the competition will be made public in a format determined by the competition organiser. The exhibition concepts and summaries of the scenarios for all submitted projects will be made available. However, the full scenarios, including visualisations, will only be disclosed with the express consent of the curators.
Explaining her choice Lesley Lokko said that the title operates on several levels:
“Firstly, Africa is the laboratory of the future. We are the world’s youngest continent, with an average age half that of Europe and the United States, and a decade younger than Asia. We are the world’s fastest urbanising continent, growing at a rate of almost 4% per year. This rapid and largely unplanned growth is generally at the expense of local environment and ecosystems, which put us at the coal face of climate change at both a regional and planetary level. We remain the most under-vaccinated continent at just 15%, yet recorded the fewest deaths and infections by a significant margin that the scientific community still can’t quite explain So often on the wrong side of hope and history, the resilience, self-reliance and a long, long history of grass-roots community health care suddenly tipped the balance in our favour. The long and traumatic history of forced migration through the trans-Atlantic slave trade is ground on which successive struggles for civil rights and a more civil society are being fought all over the world today. In all the talk of decarbonisation, it is easy to forget that black bodies were the first units of labour to fuel European imperial expansion that shaped the modern world. Racial equity and climate justice are two sides of the same coin.
But hope is a powerful currency. To be hopeful is to be human. At a deeply personal level, I owe my presence at this table today to the tireless demands for a more just, more inclusive and more equitable world fought for by generations before me. The vision of a modern, diverse, and inclusive society is seductive and persuasive, but as long as it remains an image, it is a mirage. Something more than representation is needed, and architects historically are key players in translating images into reality.
Secondly, La Biennale di Venezia itself is also a kind of laboratory of the future, a time and space in which speculations about the discipline’s relevance to this world — and the world to come — take place. Today, the word ‘laboratory’ is more generally associated with scientific experimentation and conjures up images of a specific kind of room or building. But Richard Sennett’s examination of the word ‘workshop’, from which the word ‘laboratory’ stems, deepens the concept of collaborative endeavours in a different way. In the ancient world, in both China and Greece, the workshop was the most important institution anchoring civic life. In the aftermath of the American civil war, Booker T Washington, an ex-slave, conceived a project in which freed slaves recovering from slavery would leave home, train at two model institutions, the Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, and return to their home communities. Importantly, during this temporary relocation, cooperation would be forged by direct experience and daily contact with one another as equals. We envisage our exhibition as a kind of workshop, a laboratory where architects and practitioners across an expanded field of creative disciplines draw out examples from their contemporary practices that chart a path for the audience — participants and visitors alike — to weave through, imagining for themselves what the future can hold”.
- ROD POLONIA – Daria Malicka, Michał Centkowski, Grzegorz Layer
- nie-pokoje – Mikołaj Cichocki, Maria Anna Moskal, Bartosz Teodorczyk
- plaża z recyklingu – Arkadiusz Kiernicki
- Dare to create – Maciej Cholewa, Jakub Gondorowicz (Archipolo), Wojciech Hryszkiewicz (Archipolo), Aleksander Maciak (Archipolo)
- Odzyskiwanie przyszłości – Jakub Bąk, Agnieszka Błońska
- Syntetyczne sny. Wielokierunkowy świat wspólnej przyszłości – Magdalena Górecka
- Laboratorium Przyszłości: Tu i teraz – Agnieszka Suchocka
- Elephant in the room – Sara Czerwińska, Alicja Gzowska, Agnieszka Kotschy, Wojciech Lesiak, Anna Syska
- Obojętność, obopólność. Dychotomie granicy – Szymon Olber, Piotr Sokołowski
- Stół Wspólny – Aleksandra Redzisz, Jan Przedpełski
- deColoNNize – A-A Collective (Zygmunt Borawski, Srdjan Zlokapa, Furio Montoli, Martin Marker), Michał Murawski
- Miejsce Troski – Agnieszka Kacprzak, Iwona Kalenik [PROJEKT REZERWOWY]
- TRANSFORM! – Paweł Brylski
- Kryptyk Statystyczny – Andrzej Olejniczak
- Solaris – Anna Lipiarz
- ARCHITEKTURA JEST KOBIETĄ dzięki temu jest dla wszystkich – FERWOR (Katarzyna Strzelecka-Paciorek, Paweł Paciorek)
- TWÓJ WYBÓR Przyszłość zależy od naszej teraźniejszości – FERWOR (Katarzyna Strzelecka-Paciorek, Paweł Paciorek)
- MORALNOŚĆ – Anna Grajper-Dobiesz, Sebastian Dobiesz
- Lodowiec / Kształty Przyszłości / Delikatność i Moc – Marzena Turek-Gaś
- Wiara, Nadzieja, Miłość – Waldemar Tatarczuk
- Z kawałka ziemi – Dorota Brauntsch, Monika Brauntsch, Stanisław Kempa, Ewa Kierklo
- TERRA XXX. Manifest architektonicznego marzycielstwa – Małgorzata Jędrzejczyk
- W międzyczasie – Paweł Gawlik, Zuzanna Mielczarek, Zofia Piotrowska, Łukasz Stępnik, Milena Trzcińska
- SĄSIEDZI. NA GRANICY POZNANIA – Izabela Brola-Cieśluk, Joanna Juszczak, Piort Juszczak
- TWIERDZA EUROPA Nowa architektura granic europejskich – Stanisław Welbel
- układane – Jacek Sosnowski [PROJEKT ZWYCIĘSKI]
- WYBIERZ PRZYSZŁOŚĆ – Jakub Lipski
- PRZEPŁYWY – FUNDACJA MIASTONATURA (Małgorzata Stolarska-Fronia, Katarzyna Billik, Małgorzata Bonowicz, Michał Czerwiński, Małgorzata Dembowska, Anna Dobek-Lenczewska, Anna Majewska-Karolak, Jakub Matela, Barbara Płonczyńska, Agnieszka Radziszewska, Zuzanna Rosińska, Michał Sokołowski)
- POZA CENTRUM – Warebi Brisibe, Sofia Dyak, Alicja Gzowska, Łukasz Stanek
- Gruzy Odzyskane – Adam Przywara
- Common Sense – Urszula Kuc-Petelska, Zofia Kurczych, Igor Łysiuk, Barbara Majerska, Aleksandra Piotrkowicz, Michał Pyka, Małgorzata Romanowicz, Ewa Solarz, Dominika Zielińska
- LIGHT PAVILION – Karolina Hałatek, Urszula Kuc-Petelska, Zofia Kurczych, Igor Łysiuk, Barbara Majerska, Aleksandra Piotrkowicz, Michał Pyka, Małgorzata Romanowicz, Ewa Solarz, Dominika Zielińska
- Iwona Bogusławska, Martyna Regent, Jan J. Zygmuntowski
- BAZAAR POLONIA – Anastasiia Tsisar
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