This year's prize, awarded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Hanna Wroblewska in the Architecture and Space category, was won by Aleksandra Wasilkowska, an interdisciplinary architect who is not afraid to act in the shadow realm. How was the award justified?
Projects of an interdisciplinary nature, which she creates, are the result of a search for links between the problems of architecture in the broadest sense and issues raised by sociology, complexity science and social psychology, among others. This allows for a change of perspective and looking at urban or architectural issues from a different position. Wasilkowska's projects include installations in public spaces, buildings, garden and interior arrangements, as well as exhibitions and experiments with social impact. Most of her work stems from her interest in new ways of viewing the city as a social organism, in which participatory techniques, mechanisms for the formation of informal public spaces, self-organization and the collective subconscious play a large role.
Aleksandra Wasilkowska
This year's award winner, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, is a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Warsaw University of Technology; she also earned a diploma with distinction from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Bretagne, where she studied under Pritzker Prize winner Anne Lacaton.
Błonie Market by Aleksandra Wasilkowska Architectural Studio
Photo: Nate Cook
She gained professional experience in the Paris office of François Roche - R&Sie(n). Since 2007 she has been running her own architectural studio in Warsaw. In her work she focuses on "shadow architecture" - designs for public toilets, scenography, exhibitions and parks, as well as bazaars (she is the author of, among other projects, the Mies van der Rohe 2024 Błonie Market, which has won numerous awards and was nominated for the European Union's Mies van der Rohe Prize, as well as the revitalization of the Bakalarska market in Warsaw).
Automated Warsaw Toilet, proj.: Pracownia Architektoniczna Aleksandra Wasilkowska, Marek Happach
photo: Maciej Landsberg
Three volumes of the publication "Architecture of the Shadow" have been published so far under her editorship. Together with Agnieszka Kurant, Wasilkowska represented Poland at the 12th International Architecture Biennale in Venice with the installation "Emergency Exit."
Visualization of the project of an elementary school in Niemcz, proj.: Pracownia Architektoniczna Aleksandra Wasilkowska
© Pracownia Architektoniczna Aleksandra Wasilkowska
Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage
This is an annual prize honoring Polish artists, awarded since 1997. Its winners are recognized for lifetime achievement or special outstanding achievements of a given year.
This year the lifetime achievement award went to Irena Jun, theater and film actress, director and educator. The award in the Visual Arts category went to artist Agnieszka Brzeżanska, while in the Animator of Culture category Zofia Bisiak, author of projects related to art, architecture and spatial education, was awarded. In the Theater category, the award went to Theater 21, a theater group whose actors are mainly people with Down syndrome and on the autism spectrum, and in the Heritage Preservation category to the Association of Folk Artists, which has been cultivating traditions in the fields of fine arts, folklore and folk literature since the 1960s. In the Film category, the award went to the creator of the film "Losing the Balance" - Korek Bojanowski, and in the Dance category - the Center in Motion, which operates in Warsaw. In the Folk Culture category, Antoni Kroh, a writer, ethnographer, translator, researcher and curator of exhibitions devoted to the folk culture of the Carpathians, was recognized, and in the Music category - Marta Gardolinska, the first female conductor in thehistory of the TU Orchester Wien, the first woman music director of the Opéra National de Lorraine and the first guest conductor of the Orquestra Simfónica de Barcelona. The title of Patron of Culture was awarded this year to the EFC Foundation, founded by Andrzej Czernecki, whose mission is to equalize educational opportunities for young people, and in the Literature category, Małgorzata Łukasiewicz, a translator of German-language literature twice nominated for the Nike Literary Award, was awarded.
Award winners in the Architecture category in past years included Robert Konieczny (2011), Tomasz Konior (2016), Boleslaw Stelmach (2017), Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Łatak (2018), Witold Cęckiewicz (2021), Krzysztof Ingarden (2022) and Marek Budzyński (2023).
