The International Architecture Biennale Krakow 2023 is coming!

Ola Kloc

04 of September '23

It's time to reclaim the city!

The city has to be recovered, say the organizers of this year's International Biennale of Architecture, which will be held already on October 13 and 14 at the ICE Congress Center in Krakow! The MBA is hosted by the City of Krakow, and involved in its organization together with the SARP Krakow Branch are: Faculty of Architecture of the Tadeusz Kosciuszko Cracow University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts of the Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Cracow Academy, Małopolska Regional Chamber of Architects of Poland, Architecture & Business and National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning. The event was held under the honorary patronage of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Marshal of the Malopolska Region.

partners of the meeting

TheInternational Architecture Biennale (MBA) has been held in Krakow since 1985. In addition to competitions, exhibitions and presentations, the event is accompanied by discussions that have focused on urban spaces for several years now. Indeed, MBA Krakow's mission is to create an interdisciplinary, intellectual "ferment" conducive to sensitizing the city to the challenges of creating a friendly, built urban environment, open to people and their needs.

recover

Lessons from the past edition of the MBA, whose slogan was "re-use," led the organizers to this year's theme for the event - "Recover," or reclaim.

The modern city is in need of change. By city here we mean a group of people, and an immanent feature of people is the constant desire for change. Their pace and scope is dynamically increasing over the centuries. A city is also a structure, and this one changes differently: longer, harder, perhaps more dramatically? After all, building matter is quite durable. A certain "unevenness" of changes appears, resulting from the heterogeneity of their rhythms. There is also a certain cyclicity in these changes: the mental of the residents, as well as the physical shape of the city. This provides an opportunity to return to spaces in the city already enshrined earlier, and covered by later layers. Earlier spaces are familiar, and thus more easily accepted, and even so, uncovering adds a new quality to them, the organizers explain.

The process of restoring records and traces hidden in the urban tissue is supposed to help reactivate, "heal", "reclaim" the city.

Urban Roundtable

October 13 (Friday), 10:30 am

The biennial will be inaugurated by the Urban Roundtable, the originator and moderator of which, together with Tomasz Janowski, is Małgorzata Tomczak, editor-in-chief of A&B. The debate will be joined by Rafał Matyja (historian and political scientist, Cracow University of Economics), Jerzy Muzyk (lawyer, Deputy Mayor of the City of Cracow for Sustainable Development), Stanislaw Mazowiecki (lawyer, Deputy Mayor of the City of Cracow for Sustainable Development). Sustainable Development), Stanisław Mazur (political scientist, Rector of the Cracow University of Economics, initiator of the Better Cracow Association), Marek Kaszyński (Chairman of the Małopolska Regional Chamber of Architects of the Republic of Poland), Krzysztof Görlich (Deputy Mayor of the City of Cracow 1994-1998), Agnieszka Kalinowska-Sołtys (architect, President of SARP), Maciej Franta (architect, Franta Group), Maciej Miłobędzki (architect, JEMS Architekci), Agata Twardoch (urban planner, Faculty of Architecture, Silesian University of Technology), Piotr Legerski (real estate developer, SBDiM), Wojciech Januszczyk (landscape architect, Catholic University of Lublin), Janusz Sepioł (architect, Architect of the City of Rzeszow), Piotr Fokczynski (architect, President of the Chamber of Architects of the Republic of Poland) and Magdalena Kozien-Wozniak (architect, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Cracow University of Technology), to look together and from different perspectives not only at the conditions of the architectural profession in Poland, but also how it affects urban space. Is there a prescription for the spatial chaos costing us nearly PLN 85 billion a year? Is it possible to conclude a New Pact for Space that will help create better urban space and a better city?

Discovering Rivers

October 13 (Friday), 1:30 pm

The panel, the heart of which will be the river, will be moderated by Marcin Brataniec (eM4 . Pracownia Architektury . Brataniec).

Life cannot exist without water. [...] It happens that an ungrateful, insatiable city takes the life of water, injects it into underground channels to drink it to the bottom. It overgrows the dried-up riverbeds with houses. It replaces streams of water with streams of cars. [In search of the water of life, perhaps we should rediscover urban rivers.

Participants will include Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis of the Centala Design Group, Aleksander Janicki (intermedia artist), Eric Luiten (TU Delft) and Piotr Kempf (director of the Board of Urban Greenery in Krakow).

Transformations of a Resilient City

October 14 (Saturday), 10:30 am

The second day of the Biennale will open with a block devoted to urban transformation processes - spatial, functional, environmental - using concrete examples. Carlos Marmolejo Duarte (Barcelona School of Architecture) will present a model of contemporary Barcelona, Micha de Haas, Architect of the City of Amersfoort, will talk about the dynamic changes of the Dutch city, and Lodz in three scales will be looked at by Anna Aneta Tomczak (Lodz University of Technology), Sylwia Krzyszto fik (Lodz University of Technology), Robert Warsza (Lodz University of Technology) and Jakub Krzysztofik (president of SARP Lodz). The panel chaired by Kinga Racoń-Leja (Krakow University of Technology) will also include Andrzej Szarata (Rector of Krakow University of Technology, specialist in traffic engineering and travel modeling) and Ewa Całus (Plenipotentiary of the Mayor of Krakow for Climate Education).

Architecture social art

October 14 (Saturday), 1:30 pm

The last block will be devoted to the social role of relationship architecture. This issue will also be discussed using specific examples, more specifically in the context of two Krakow neighborhoods: Grzegórzki and Wesoła. This part of the event will open with a lecture by Marcin Sapeta, an architect who works in Kengo Kuma's studio on a daily basis, and Krzysztof Ingarden (KAAFM) will talk about his experiences from the Polish-Japanese workshop devoted to the Nishi-Yamato Danchi estate in Tokyo. Piotr Wróbel (KAAFM) and Piotr Legerski (president of SBDiM) will talk about the "Grzegórzki" project and experiences in creating a new structure of the place, and Romuald Loegler (KAAFM), Bartłomiej Kisielewski (HORIZONE Studio) and Carolina Pietyra (KBF) will talk about the "Wesoła" project.

The Biennale will also be complemented by exhibitions (Cracow University of Technology's New City of Cracow exhibition, or proposals by WAPK and TU Dresden students, presentation of SBDiM/KAAFM competition works), workshops (SARP U40, SKOZK - urban furniture) and less conventional events, like speed dating! You are welcome!

MBA Krakow 2023 will be held on October 13-14, 2023 at the ICE Krakow Congress Center. The event will also be streamed online. More information and a detailed program will be available soon on the MBA Kraków website.

architecture + interiors + design

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The International Architecture Biennale Krakow 2023 is coming!