Greetings from district Poland at exhibition in Warsaw

Kacper Kępiński

16 of December '21

Greetings from the districts - exhibition

On Saturday, December 18, the National Institute of Architecture and Urbanism invites you to the opening of the exhibition Greetings from the Counties! This sums up the project, which has been carried out for several years, popularizing knowledge about the architecture of interwar modernism in smaller towns.

Photo: Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU

The Greetings from the Districts exhibition summarizes the activities undertaken by local curators in individual former districts of the Second Polish Republic in 2020-2021. This is the second installment of the exhibition summarizing local events and explorations - the first took place at the end of 2019, also in Warsaw in a commercial space in the underpass under the Roundabout of the Forty-Year-Old. The district activities taking place across the country are informal, popularizing, involving the local community.

architecture for everyone

The popularizing dimension of the activities carried out translates into the shape of the joint exhibition. It does not take place in a professional exhibition space, in a gallery or museum, but in a publicly accessible commercial premises, this year in the first floor of a residential block at 64 Solidarności Avenue, next to the Catering Bar. The organizers of the project, officially named Infrastruktura Niepoldegłości: Architecture of Interwar County Modernization Projects, are keen to gain the attention of casual passersby, whowill be interested in the display window and go inside. At the exhibition, in addition to exhibits in the form of spatial installations, mock-ups and architectural photographs, free publications and walking maps will be available for download.

Our exhibition is aimed at all those interested in the architectural heritage of the twentieth century of smaller and medium-sized centers. With the "Districts" project we wanted to show that the impressive realizations of the interwar modernism period are not only Gdynia, Katowice, Krakow or Warsaw. What's more, the twentieth century is not only modernism - and also less spectacular, but equally interesting small-scale projects, referring to local traditions. The exhibition is divided into four intertwining thematic blocks: the city, [housing] colonies, resorts and industry. Industry had a huge impact on the development of cities between the wars, not only in the CID or Silesia. In turn, various colonies and settlements grew dynamically around the industrial plants. Their residents, in order to take a dose of healthy rest in sanatoriums and spas, went to mountain or seaside resorts. This cross-section of architectural and infrastructural phenomena appears in our exhibition.

Zuzanna Mielczarek, exhibition curator, NIAiU

The exhibition is divided into four themes, researched by local curators in selected counties: colonies, city, resorts and industry. The materials in the exhibition will showcase the architecture of 21 localities:

Edition 2021
Cieszyn county - Wojciech Lesiak
Ostroleka - Jolanta Żubrowska
Skarżysko-Kamienna - Katarzyna Lisowska
Suwałki - Joanna Lickiewicz
Edition 2020
Brodnica - Marcin Zalewski
Bydgoszcz county - PROLOG+1 (Mirabela Jurczenko, Bartosz Kowal, Wojciech Mazan, Bartłomiej Poteralski, Rafał Śliwa and Robert Witczak)
Krosno county - Katarzyna Solińska
Nowy Sącz county - Aleksandra Gryc, Zuzanna Kasperczyk, Małgorzata Wesołowska
Starachowice - Dagna Dembiecka, Aleksandra Krutnik
Sosnowiec - Jacek Jakubek
Ostrów Mazowiecka - Miastopracownia (Barbara Nawrocka and Dominika Wilczyńska)
Tarnowskie Góry - Marek Panuś
Edition 2019
County of Chrzanów - Aleksandra Gryc, Zuzanna Kasperczyk
Królewska Huta (Chorzów) - Artur Wosz
Inowrocław District - Iwona Jastrzębska-Puzowska
Kalisz - Mateusz Rabiega
Łapy Osse - Małgorzata Wesołowska
Maritime District - Olga Baron
Radom - Mateusz Kiełczyński
Rzeszów - Joanna Malczewska, Agata Mikrut
Siedlce - Joanna Lickiewicz