CENTRALA see the answer to the climate challenges of the future in restoring wet areas and rewilding urban rivers. In their projects, they propose a vision of irrigated Warsaw, in which a recreated hydrographic network regulates the city’s microclimate and opens it to tidal dynamics. They also showcase the lost wealth of wetscapes: riparian forests, floodplains, mudflats, swamps, bogs, morasses, and quags. Was the Sadurka River surrounded by similar natural forms before its course was regulated and transformed into the Służewiecki Potok stream?

CENTRALA are renowned for their ability to highlight important phenomena and introduce new concepts and ways of looking into the urban debate. They have long been interested in what is the theme of this year’s World Wetlands Day: “Wetlands and Human Wellbeing.” Urban swamps have gained visibility in recent years through community projects carried out jointly by architects, naturalists, artists, activists, and writers. At the exhibition, CENTRALA will present its activities to date: from fantasies about flood waters from 2018 (climate fiction), through hikes through areas that could become soaked again (conducted since 2019), to wetland-park projects developed within the framework of an emerging “wet coalition for urban wetlands.” One of such parks could be created in the vicinity of the Służewiec Culture House, on the nearby foothills, in the floodplains of the Sadurka.

"Mokrobraz / Wetscape" exhibition coordinator: Nel Lato – Sister Sadurka River

CENTRALA materials are archives from the processes of many joint activities, reconnaissance missions, expeditions, cooperations, and collaborations. Our thanks go to:

Anna Ptak, Aleksandra Kędziorek;
Anna Zdzieborska, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art; Elżbieta Melon, Joanna Bogdanowicz, Botanical Garden of the University of Warsaw; Kuba Szczęsny, ZODIAK Warsaw Architecture Pavilion, Aleksandra Zawistowska, Kuba Morkowski, Adam Perka; Architektura i Biznes, Małgorzata Tomczak; Anna Czaban, Wiktor Kotowski, Adam Snopek, Wetland Protection Centre, bagna.pl, Studio Bękarty, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Michał Matejko; Autoportret; Marta Kępińska, Dorota Leśniak-Rychlak, Michał Wicha, Jan Mencwel; Grupa Zakole (Zuzia Derlacz, Krystyna Jędrzejewska-Szmek, Ola Knychalska, Olga Roszkowska, Pola Salicka, Igor Stokfiszewski); Katarzyna Roj, Galeria Dizajn BWA Wrocław, Onimo.pl;Bogna Światkowska, Zofka Kofta, Bęc Zmiana Foundation; Magdalena Staroszczyk, Konrad Schiller, Wola Museum; Rafał Kosewski, Copernicus Science Centre, Artmontage; Michalina Dębska, Martyna Kędrzyńska, Marta Lewicka, Wiktor Martin, Cezary Nagórski, Szymon Pałczyński, PROLOG+1; Wojtek Kacperski, Capital City of Warsaw; Aleksandra Litorowicz, Mariusz Tarkawian, Miastozdziczanie.

World Wetlands Day is celebrated on 2 February, on the anniversary of the adoption of the international Convention on Wetlands in 1971. It aims to raise awareness of the crucial role of wetlands for people and the planet. Care for the natural environment is also part of the statutory tasks of the Służewski Culture House, which occupies a special place on the map of Warsaw, being located in a natural, marshy valley of the Służewiecki Potok. In 2023, the River Sisters collective symbolically restored the rivulet’s original name, Sadurka. With this gesture, attention was drawn to its past and the opportunities it still offers for nature and humans.

Guided by the idea of the amplification of nature, CENTRALA – Małgorzata Kuciewicz & Simone De Iacobis create projects based on exploring the relationship between architecture and natural processes. For them, architecture is a flow, not merely a static form; and gravity, water circulation as well as atmospheric and astronomical phenomena are its building blocks. CENTRALA see architecture that combines the intimate, human scale with the scale of the planet as a means of tuning us into the rhythm of the world around us, strengthening our sense of connection with nature, opening us to experiencing its vanishing cycles, and direct attention to the relationship between micro-events and changes taking place on the Earth’s scale.

CENTRALA are winners of the competition FUTUWAWA. How Will We Live in Warsaw of the Future (2021). They presented their projects at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018, 2023), London Design Biennale (2021), Lisbon Architecture Triennial (2022), Gwangju Biennale (2023). Since 2017, they regularly collaborate with the Kharkiv School of Architecture.

www.centrala.net.pl
Photo: Sadurka flood water, Simone De Iacobis, 2022

Exhibition launch:
20 January 2024, Saturday, 18.00
Służewiec Culture House Gallery
Mokotów
ul. Jana Sebastiana Bacha 15
02-728 Warsaw