Exhibition "The Space Between Us": fashion shoot for "Polska" magazine taken among forms designed by Stanisław Zamecznik, 1966, photo: E. Kossakowski / Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw archive
The "Warsaw under Construction" urban design festival, organised for the second time by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, attempts to describe the character of modern Warsaw and its function as an urban centre
What does a modern Warsaw mean? Who would a modern Warsaw be for? How do you live in a city, what do you use it for, why do we need a city at all?
The second annual "Warsaw under Construction" festival lasts throughout October. During the festival, Warsaw's Museum of Modern Art becomes a meeting hub for creative minds to work together to create the type of city its residents want. The museum has invited everyone - from Warsaw NGOs, municipal activists to designers, architects, artists, journalists, and sociologists - to participate in debates and projects.
Over seven events are planned, beginning with the inaugural Moon Ride on October 2 at 19:00 on the Defilad Square which features Warsaw cyclists generating enough energy to light up a Moon-like balloon. Exhibitions, workshops, lectures, film screenings, and trips are also on the programme, along with a and open sessions series for Warsaw residents to present their own idea of what Warsaw should be like in ten minutes or less.
Architecture exhibitions will be put on in five different points of the city. The work of Arseniusz Romanowicz, designer of Warsaw's modern train stations, will be on view October 1-31, 2010, at the Warszawa-Powiśle train station. The prewar villa on 4 Frascati Street will show an exhibition on the architect Karol Schayer, its designer, who immigrated to Beirut after 1945 to design 140 of the city's ultramodern buildings that lend this Mediterranean Metropolis and its modernist face (October 17-31).
Additionally, the "PRL ™" / "PPR ™" at the Museum of Technology (October 15 - November 15), offers a fascinating exhibit about the export of Polish architecture and urban planning to Africa and the near East in the 1960s and 1970s. An especially interesting project is an exhibition called "The Space Between Us" (SARP Pavilion, 1 Foksal Street, October 7-31) devoted to Stanisław Zamecznik, a Warsaw architect whose work is a precursor of exhibition designs that shaped an entire epoch of Polish exhibitions.
The common denominator of all festival exhibitions is a modern vision of architecture being the result of a comprehensive urban concept. However, is comprehensive planning still possible or useful in modern times? This is another question that the exhibition "Warsaw under Construction" will attempt to answer. Kazuyo Sejima, Japanese architect and winner of this year's Pritzker Prize (a.k.a. the architectural Nobel) will talk about the contemporary understanding of architecture. Her acclaimed projects, such as New York's New Museum or the 21st-Century Art Museum in Kanazawa, Japan are a lethal blow to the iconic, extravagant, and excessively expressive architecture fashionable in recent decades. Sejima's nearly transparent architecture is more for living than just looking. Meanwhile, daily life in the big city is another important theme of the "Warsaw under Construction" festival.
In the big city, everyone is a designer of their daily life, even their menu. That is why the "Warsaw under Construction" festival includes cooking workshops and debates about gastronomy. Access to inexpensive and healthy food and the proper place of Warsaw's bazaars in the social and economic landscape are the subject of debates and one of the "Proposition" sections. Another Proposition section is devoted to the limits on individual freedom in the city, such as a meeting called "Grass" - why we are/aren't allowed to sit on it, what we are/aren't allowed to drink, smoke and why.
Enjoying the public sphere is the theme of activities by three young London architectural firms, Common Office, Dallas Pierce Quintero and Office for Subversive Architecture. Their project, collectively entitled simply Pleasure will be implemented in the area of Warsaw's Rotunda, in the Pasaż Wiecha and the underground parts of Warsaw's Central Train Station.
A look at Warsaw from the outside in, as by the young British architects, provides an opportunity to notice universal problems experienced by all metropolises. The "Warsaw under Construction" Festival is an opportunity to learn about the experiences of others and acquire knowledge about big-city phenomena. That is the reason the festival invited so many guests from abroad and grouped their appearances in two thematic weekend sessions, to be held in the Museum's auditorium.
Expert knowledge, exchange of information, cooperation in the form of workshops and debates - the "Warsaw under Construction" Festival offers the residents of Warsaw tools to seek out their city's modern identity. This search is the foundation of the Museum of Modern Art's mission, a museum that has modernity in its name, is being built in Warsaw, for Warsaw and its residents, and its building on the central Defilad Square will be one of the most visible symbols of a new chapter of the city's history.
"Warsaw under Construction 2" Festival runs from October 1-31, 2010.
More information at: www.warszawawbudowie.pl
Source: Press release