Does collective design make sense? The answer is rather bitter. It is provided by "Young Poland," the main exhibition of the 14th edition of the Szczecin Westival, which opened on Wednesday. The successful exhibition is a record of works and a presentation of a curatorial experiment. The accompanying second exhibition is an addition to the interesting Szczecin themes of the NIAiU project titled "Identity. 100 years of Polish architecture".
Westival kicked off on Wednesday,May 11, after a pandemic hiatus thus shifting from autumn to spring. This year's edition looks ahead and takes place under the rather lengthy slogan "The future of Polish architecture I look forward to." It will last until Sunday, so for only five days it will be possible to see two exhibitions located in the magnificent scenery of the interiors of the recently restored Lentz Villa (former Youth Palace) on Wojska Polskiego Avenue in Szczecin.
14th Westival, Szczecin, opening of the event and exhibitions, May 11, 2022; main hall of the Lentz Villa with Westival program text
photo: Jakub Głaz
The first exhibition dedicated to the past provides the subsoil for the second - asking what's next in post-Pandemic times. This is even reflected in the location of both expositions. The past of Polish architecture occupied the first floor of the building, the future - under the slogan "Young Poland" - seven rooms of the second floor. On the first floor you can see another mutation of the exhibition inaugurated in 2019, "Identity. 100 Years of Polish Architecture," whose main coordinator is the National Institute of Architecture and Urbanism.
modernism good and little known
This time the exhibition was enriched with a very interesting and still perhaps too little known in the country achievements of Szczecin architects from 1945-1989. The curator of the Westival, a talented architect with valuable design achievements - Piotr Śmierzewski - has selected eleven buildings that still exist today, including extremely valuable ones: the Copernican Hall of the Pomeranian Medical Academy, St. Cross Church and the KS "Czarni" rowing center. Also present, among others, is a very interesting pavilion school in the Głębokie district, as well as modernist additions to the metropolitan center of Szczecin. Smierzewski, opening the exhibition, explained:
We wanted to see what meaning this now-closed chapter in Szczecin architecture has for mature and beginning active designers. Does the architecture of the period 1945-89 still have any meaning for them. And if so, what kind.
Although the exhibition lasts for a very short time, the Szczecin realizations will soon be seen in other centers. The NIAiU exhibition is growing all the time and will soon come to Gdansk. After the inauguration of "100 years..." in 2019, when five Polish cities (Poznań, Lublin, Warsaw, Katowice, Kraków) were presented as part of it, they were recently joined by Łódź and Bydgoszcz. The presence of the peripherally located and still too poorly known Szczecin is an exceptionally valuable addition, which makes it clear how talented was the community of local architects who created the post-war city.
The exhibition "Identity. 100 years of Polish architecture", entrance to the exhibition with photos of Szczecin projects
photo: Jakub Głaz
collective competition
The Westival itself, its longevity and high level, is proof, moreover, of the unflagging creativity of Szczecin 's SARP-affiliated community representatives. This time they focused on young Polish architects - about 30 years old - and checked what design and professional attitudes they represent. Eleven subjectively selected studios took part in an experiment lasting several months, which was, by the way, the result of the participants' joint findings. Offices invited to Westival were: PROLOG, Miastopracownia, Trzupki, K3xMore, UGO, Rzut, Pracownia Architektury Krajobrazu Marta Tomasiak, P2PA, Aleksander Wadas Studio, JEJU Studio, AA-Collective. Already at the start, in the autumn of last year, they abandoned the banal idea of presenting their work and decided that together, as a collective, they would take part in one of the competitions held in the country. The choice fell on the competition for the expansion of the Museum of the Deed of Uprising in Mount St. Anne (details and results: here)
A topic with a heavy genre and an idea that is no longer very clear to the younger generation seemed to the designers a fraught challenge. It was also the decision to work collectively on the topic - an attempt to answer whether such an activity can be creative and effective. And it is primarily about this process that the exhibition "Young Poland" tells: from the room with a self-presentation of all participants, through the documentation of joint activities, their design effects, to the compilation of valuable reflections of each of the designers. As the organizers inform:
The aesthetic and content consistency of the exhibition, was taken care of by the Program Council, which included the architectural group PROLOG and the quarterly Rzut.
together means more difficult?
Post-workshop reflections are not optimistic, because, as it turned out, collective work combined with simultaneous performance of daily professional duties, did not run smoothly. Already at the very beginning, two studios (P2PA and K3xMore) opted out of the collective action - deciding to compete individually. Three different projects were created as part of the collective. The result? An individually created work by the P2PA office took first place. One of the team works - an honorable mention (you can read an interview with members of the design cooperative here). The exhibition presents these struggles in an interesting and multifaceted way in the rooms curated by the individual participants of the entire project.
"Young Poland" exhibition; left: a table with the reflections of the participants; right: a painting transformation of the final works by Trzupki
photo: Jakub Glaz
So whoever is in Szczecin or has time to visit the city over the weekend should definitely see both exhibitions and take part in the discussions on the past, present and - precisely - future of Polish architecture (program: here). During the final debate, on Saturday, the participants of the festival experiment will try to discuss and analyze it in more detail. It's all the more worthwhile to go to Szczecin, since the next edition of Westival will take place only in two years. The organizers from SARP have decided that, like several other national architectural events, the event will henceforth have the form of a biennial. For financial and organizational reasons, only in this formula do they see a chance to maintain the high level of the event.
Meanwhile, we will report on the further course of the festival, debates and a critical summary of "Young Poland" in a comprehensive report in the next issue of the paper edition of our monthly magazine.
