CENTRALA
About our Guest:
Centrala (Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis), is a Warsaw-based architecture and research studio that works with reinterpretations and spatial interventions aimed at renewing the language of architecture. In their architecture research practice, they examine the relationship between architecture and natural phenomena. They conceive of architecture as a process, considering gravity, water circulation, and atmospheric and astronomical events its building materials. Their work has been presented in solo exhibitions: Amplifying Nature in the Polish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, and The Pavilion of Reverberations at the 2020 Festival Internacional de Arquitectura y Diseño de Logroño. They have collaborated as exhibition designers with numerous European museums and gallery spaces, including the Polish pavilion at the 2016 Triennale di Milano.
House of Zofia and Oskar Hansen
in Szumin,
Photograph by Michał Matejko
Artwork by Alicja Bielawska, Photograph by Michał Matejko
About the topic:
"Would we desire to experience discomfort if we knew it can help us hear better the fading pulse of nature? Although the history of architecture and design has rather aimed at securing human physical and psychological well-being, often to the disadvantage of other species, the talk proposes an opposite approach. Presenting a brief history of discomfort design and few contemporary projects that respond to it, the conversation aims at encouraging to open up to a degree of discomfort in domestic and urban spaces. The examples analyse how one can achieve different microclimates while building with rotten materials; design with the inclusion of natural, unpredictable forces; undermine the principle of firmitas in architecture; tune it to the rhythm of seasonal domestic rituals; share urban spaces with other than human species; and appreciate the nuances of the dusk."
Summer lodging designed by Jan Bogusławski, Polish Pavilion in Paris, 1937
© Polish National Digital Archives
Discussion date: Thursday May 13th, 2021.
©️ 2023 Panta Rhei Collaborative
