“Plantstoria”: Special exhibition on German architecture in Poland at the Pilecki Institute Berlin
A special exhibition at the Pilecki Institute explores the history of a residential neighborhood in Ciechanów, Poland. It opens on Thursday.
The exhibition "Plantstory: A Narrative of Architecture, Nature, and National Socialist Colonial Policy ," which opens on Thursday, October 30, at 7 p.m. at the Pilecki Institute in Berlin (Pariser Platz 4A, 10117 Berlin), explores the history of a residential district in Ciechanów, Poland, built during the German occupation in World War II. Similar housing developments, colloquially known as "Berlinki" or "Poniemieckie" ("post-German"), can still be found in many cities across the country today. The exhibition's curator and architect, Barbara Nawrocka, examines this architectural heritage from the perspective of nature and landscape, demonstrating how plant life, history, politics, and collective memory intertwine.
The district was conceived in the early 1940s as a so-called garden suburb—a housing project for German civil servants and their families in the capital of the newly created Zichenau administrative district. The concept incorporated the utopian, originally progressive ideas of the garden city movement around the British social reformer Ebenezer Howard, but here it became a tool of National Socialist colonization and propaganda.
In this way, Nawrocka draws a broad, eclectic arc: reflections on the contradictory, simultaneously modernist and reactionary nature of National Socialism meet reflections on the subjectivity of nature, reminiscent of Bruno Latour, and symbolically give plants their own voice.
After stops in Gdynia, Ciechanów, and Wrocław, where the exhibition was shown at the Muzeum Architektury, Poland's only architecture museum, Plantstoria received considerable attention from the professional world. Architecture magazines such as Architektura Murator and Architecture Snob described it as one of the most impressive projects of the last season. We are all the more delighted to now present it to the Berlin public.
Exercising Modernity is an interdisciplinary, intellectual, and artistic exchange program on the history of modernism in Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on art and architecture, established in 2019. Originally conceived as a German-Polish-Israeli cooperation project, its thematic focus has expanded over time to include countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, and others. The program aims to discuss the history and modernist legacy of Poland and Eastern Europe in the 20th century against the backdrop of parallel global modernization processes. In doing so, the program complements the increasingly influential "Bloodlands " reading of this region with an affirmative reflection on its contributions to the global history of modernity.
Previous speakers at Exercising Modernity include Marci Shore, Jan C. Behrends, Martin Kohlrausch, Robert Jan van Pelt, Zvi Efrat, Ákos Moravánszky, Przemysław Czapliński, Michał Łuczewski, and Karolina Wigura. From the beginning, cooperation partners included Liebling Haus – White City Center in Tel Aviv, later joined by the Triennale der Moderne, DOM Publishers, the Weekend Architektury festival in Gdynia, and other organizations and initiatives.
Particular attention is paid to culture, especially architecture, as a resonant space in which key social processes, perspectives, ambitions, and hopes intersect and reflect each other. Exercising Modernity also promotes critical engagement with historical and contemporary narratives of Central and Eastern Europe and questions traditional political and geographical boundaries between "East" and "West" in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Central elements of the project are the interdisciplinary Exercising Modernity Academy and the Cultural Scholarship Programme, which is organized annually and aimed at graduates of the Academy. In addition, Exercising Modernity includes a program of public events—including lectures, discussions, conferences, and exhibitions—organized in cooperation with local and international partners.
"Plantstory: A narrative about architecture, nature and National Socialist colonial policy" Exhibition duration : Opening on Thursday, 30 October, 7 p.m. until the end of February
Location : Pilecki Institute Berlin, Pariser Platz 4A, 10117 Berlin Registration : https://forms.gle/JfQzhSmZ7DTm9xjd9
Berliner-zeitung
