Enboldened by a buoyant economy, by the legacy of modernist architecture in the Saska Kępa suburb of Warsaw, and by a bona fide, must-visit design festival in Łódz, Poland's design is now on a roll. With an economic transformation underway, Warsaw-based fashion designer Ania Kuczynska believes the Polish design community directly responds to these exciting changes. "We are a huge country with population of over 40 million", she says. "Poland has so much potential!". Out on Wallpaper's radar, the magazine presents the latest news from a hotbed of creative talent...
Simon Mills' selection of the "brightest beacons in the Polish design firmament" introduces an array of talents. Here is a taste of some of those up-and-coming stars.
Mills' selection will presents Oskar Zięta, founder of Zieta Prozessdesign, and his modular, mobile furniture crafted out of ultra-light materials. His recent collection, 3+, was inspired by contemporary peripatetic lifestyles, and he cites Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Jean Prouvé, Dieter Rams, Konrad Wachsmann, R. Buckminster Fuller and Frei Otto as influences.
"Everything that surrounds us is undergoing constant change", he says."I thought I was inspired by people or well-designed products, but today I believe it’s the energy that goes into a project that is the real driver. That energy and experience sometimes result in the creation of a small, often invisible detail or an intelligent use of material".
There is also Miniio, a female design duo who create modern architecture in miniature. Doll houses are rarely things of beauty; either pink plastic nightmares or overly quaint Victorian residences with bad repro furniture. But Miniio’s "Miniko" doll house (pictured) is different. Inspired by Bauhaus and by Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan, a pair of Warsaw mums - and ex-advertising executives - made a doll house so elegant you don’t just want to play with it, you want to move in. Although Agnieszka Klimczak and Małgorzata Drozdowska started Miniio just two years ago, their dolls’ house is already part of the collection at Berlin’s Museum der Dinge.
Among Wallpaper's picks is Ania Kuczyńska, a Warsaw-based fashion designer with a global edge who set up her own label in 2007, inspired by her father’s work as an architect. According to Mills, if you go to Kuczyńska’s store and showroom on Mokotowska Street in the capital, you’ll find a collection by a fashion designer who is distinctively Polish but also very much the complete, modern European. Describing her aesthetic as "ornate minimalism", her clothes are inspired by 1980s new-wave music, Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston’s decadent Hollywood of the 1970s, and the Paris of Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon. There are soft leather accessories, her signature tube scarves, and a colour palette that includes amethyst, lilac and sandy beige.
Kosmos Project are urbane designers with natural talent, who first drew Wallpaper’s attention in 2008 when they exhibited their cross-shaped wooden radio at DMY in Berlin. Kosmos are Maciej Jelski and Ewa Bochen and while some of the products the pair design might seem rather playful, their philosophy is erudite. To this end, these graduates of Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts examined ancient Slavic rites and transferred them into modern design language with their "Collective Unconscious" project (pictured). "Polish culture is based on nature and the season changes", they say, "and that is the structure on which we build our work. We revolve around two Polish rites – Noc Kupały [Kupala Night] and Dziady [Forefathers’ Eve]. The former is the ceremony of life, the future, wealth, erotic force; the latter is the mystery of death, the past, recalling ancestors, meditation. Since the past is always an element of the future, we believe that returning to our roots can show us the way of creating the future".
The magazine also features the section Architecture Revealed, with Krzysztof Koszewski's article describing the phenomenon of Saska Kępa, a leafy enclave of modernist villas across the Vistula River from central Warsaw. People building homes there in the 1920s included well-heeled creative types – artists, actors, musicians and architects – as well as high-level officials and businessmen. They wanted modern, functional homes and commissioned young architects to design them - which included the early graduates of Warsaw University’s Faculty of Architecture, founded in 1915.
In addition to these two sections, Wallpaper's Interiors Revealed gives a pick of the local design crop, with items such as the Bull bar stool, by Studio Rygalik., the Diago chair, by Tabanda. the Barrel pouffe, by Beza Projekt, Loop Line light, by Pani Jurek, Hover sofa, by Studio Rygalik, and Little Star lamp by Shinoi.
The Polska Revealed special is realised by Wallpaper in collaboration with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the Institute's programme aimed at promoting Polish design across the world.
Thumbnail: Roman Modzelewski, the RM58 chair, produced by Vzór
Editor: Paulina Schlosser, based on Wallpaper magazine