Adrian: The topic of savagery is still nascent in Poland, so we invited people who design in this way. Marta Tomasiak pursues a similar way of thinking in her studio PAK, because after studying in Krakow she went to Denmark, where she learned it. How do you design with respect for the landscape? It's about thinking about landscape not as green trimmed grass in the garden, but about the relationship between man and nature, about what geology and climate are. Landscape is nature's response to where we are. We try to show diversity, it is key. It manifests itself in both landscape and climate. We show bioclimatic solutions, solutions that were created before air conditioning. We show passive solutions, ways to adapt modernist architecture to new climates, modernism in the tropics. We talk about diversity and tie it to the territory. In this area, we dared to go beyond the borders of our country and look for flagship projects when it comes to such solutions. For example, New Gourna in Egypt. It reinvents vernacular solutions from central and northern Egypt in the 1960s in order to create new housing based on local knowledge and local materials. Eastgate in Harare, where we see how we can use knowledge developed by animals to ventilate buildings. The Polish embassy in India [designed by Witold Cęckiewicz, Stanislaw Deńko - editor's note] is an example of modernism in the tropics. It shows how to cool by evaporation, how to use razor blades on the façade, a raised roof, how to take advantage of airflow, material colors, the location of the building, its form and so on. It answers the question: how to ensure comfort and reduce the amount of energy needed to create a building simultaneously.
An excerpt from NAS-DRA's "Baltic laboratory" installation
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Kacper: Headquarters created the project "Artisanal Microclimates" for the exhibition, in which we return to the codification of solutions and technical conditions. They show the atmospheric aspects of the city that can be influenced by buildings - air mass flow, heating, humidity, winds. At this point we don't have the tools, such as drawing designations, to mark these aspects in the design. That's why it's important to start talking about them, drawing them somehow, so that they become part of the design. We used to do it intuitively. Pre-war architecture had to deal with this, because architects back then didn't have the ability to make everything up with electricity. The text by Philippe Rahm in the book accompanying the exhibition, about the climatic aspects and the coexistence of the building with nature, is worth reading. It shows how architecture was linked to the cycles of nature, how the various solutions we associate with the development of art history are the result of climatic conditions. It is important to remember that the opposition of architecture and nature is a matter of the last few decades. What we are talking about is not reinventing architecture, but reaching for tools that have been discarded due to dependence on a particular ideology of development, on fossil fuels. We show concepts that don't look like architectural designs. We don't talk about typology or what a building should look like. We are completely missing the point. Also, talking about aestheticizing these forms that we're dealing with is complex, because the look will be different depending on where the project will be implemented. It depends on the function, their program, the climate, but also the tasks to which the buildings must respond.
Anna: This work is closer to strategy than projects strictly speaking.
Kacper:The work of Miastopracowni raises the question of what would happen if we unsealed the Embankment of the Ore Mountains in Krakow and let the Blonie be a swamp again; what kind of fish could breed there? We have the work of Jan Szeliga and Krzysztof Janas, who talk about inhumane urban revitalization, or shrinking cities. In Poland, this problem affects all cities, except Warsaw and Krakow. The question arises how to secure the interests of plants and animals in the spaces that people are leaving. This includes buildings, but also infrastructure, including underground infrastructure, such as parking lots. The question is, can we use planning tools to secure more than just human interest? Can we designate, for example, settlements not only for humans, but also for bats?
part of the exhibition on climate and pollution
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Anna: Didn't the pandemic show that if humans disappear, nature will take care of itself?
Kacper: Yes, the idea is that once nature manages itself, so that man doesn't come back and start acting again.
Anna: How can this be planned?
Kacper: Can a development plan be a de-development plan? Does the only client of the development plan have to be man, as it is now? Can the development plan safeguard the interests of non-human residents of the city? It doesn't do that now. The subject of the planners' activities is the people.
Adrian: I think that here Kacper has come to a very important element that we are talking about in the exhibition. It's about going beyond the Anthropocene, that is, designing for other entities. We show that you can design for plants, animals, water, wind.... Including all these elements and considering them equivalent to humans shows that we have more respect for nature. We can approach water in such a way, the natural cycles, the way it flows, the way it circulates in nature, to include these elements in the design itself as an equivalent element. We are, after all, one ecosystem. If the ecosystem is to be healthy, then all its components must be healthy. It's about thinking holistically and cumulatively.
Sound installation "Pollution" by Baasch
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Kacper: We show that there are projects underway in which the interests of animals or plants have been taken into account. Queen Elizabeth Park in London was created ten years ago with bat breeding sites. The sites for specific species of animals were designed from the very beginning, and the park administration is obliged to check its functioning in this regard. These are strategies that have been implemented for years. Perhaps they are too slow to break through to the mainstream. The project with the clearest technological feature is the work "Baltic Laboratory," in the section of the exhibition on pollution. Paulina Grabowska (NAS-DRA) tried to find an answer to how to deal with the pollution of the Puck Bay. What to do to clean the water using solutions present in nature: algae, seaweed. Algae, when there is too much of it, becomes a pollutant for us. The question is how to use this pollution as if it were a resource, that is, to explore its possibility of cultivation or use. The project is an illustration of a broader research project.
Adrian: In a sense, we also talk about architectural solutions, but they don't talk about architecture, they don't talk about how to design the facade, the massing. By exposing the Gleis 21 housing cooperative project in Vienna [proj. einszueins architektur - editor's note], we show that the community that built this building decided that there would be places in it for people in housing need who don't have the means to live there. They talk about the fact that, at this point, the people who need this housing are migrants. They also provide them with education and adaptation to being in a new place. The very idea of the building is something that goes beyond that life cycle that architects often look at, which is until they hand over the key to the building. They are interested in the next fifty years, in how this building will function after those fifty years. How the materials will age, how much energy it will consume. The Rokko Shidare Observatory project [designed by Hiroshi Sambuichi - editor's note] shows how an architect first studies the climate of a place, looks at where the winds are coming from in winter and summer, what the humidity is, how the sun's rays fall, what the precipitation is, local knowledge, and creates a building based on that. This is the result of a process of understanding the context in which we find ourselves, a negotiation between the elements of the natural, climatic or climate-meteorological, social and economic context. There is a need to go beyond this narrative dominated by the economic layer. In the book, we write about the life cycle of a building - how we can look for solutions that are good for the building and will extend its life. We go beyond the moment when the construction is completed and shift the thinking to the next few decades.
Annex of the exhibition dedicated to the social basis with a mockup of Terra X
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Anna: What is the symbolic dimension of this title?
Adrian: I think this title has two meanings. On the one hand, it has been used so far as a complete focus on the human being, we, however, want to go beyond this meaning and show that the focus on the human being does not exclude other elements.
Kacper: The title of the exhibition is less elaborate than that of the book, which has the subtitle, "Toward a Regenerative Architecture." Always on the tours answering the question of why we link the Anthropocene with architecture, we emphasize that building is one of the main factors shaping climate change at the moment. One of the main emitters of CO2 into the atmosphere - globally it's between 30 and 40 percent, in Warsaw more than 80 percent. In large cities, buildings are responsible for the largest share of emissions. The construction, the operation of buildings, the disposal of materials - all of these are responsible for a very large part of emissions. That's why we have a huge field in architecture. We tried to show that an environmentally harmful building can be very ugly, but also very beautiful. It doesn't matter at all. The situation is similar when it comes to regenerative buildings. The change in aesthetics that we are seeing is about common spaces and this wilderness, the introduction of new non-decorative species, the appearance of other plants or animals in the city; infrastructure for them that looks different than for people. I think that in the long run we will have to face the acceptance of the patchwork structure resulting from the increasingly common reuse. What will a building to which we transplant windows from a 1990s mall look like? If we want to talk about typologies and architecture in aesthetic terms, this is a task for architects and female architects. I mean to find a new visual language that will make these patchworks acceptable.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication edited by the curators: Kacper Kępiński and Adrian Krężlik entitled: "Anthropocene. Towards a Regenerative Architecture" published by the National Institute of Architecture and Urbanism in Warsaw in 2022
Photo: Tomasz Kubaczyk / NIAiU
Adrian: There is also the question of how we can reuse these materials. Most buildings in Europe need to be renovated. This will be happening right now. Buildings will have to undergo energy renovation. If we want to reduce the carbon footprint and this planetary boundary called "climate," such action will be necessary.
Anna: Thank you for the interview.
interviewed: Anna WALEWSKA
Photo: Jakub Rodziewicz / NIAiU
