After the screening of the film Maurice and Me, we will talk about how to effectively build narratives about “unpopular” but materially or socially valuable architecture. How to create coalitions and work to promote and use existing and available tools to ensure its visibility and understanding?



With a diverse group of discussants, we will use examples—including historical architecture, industrial resources, and late modernist buildings—to show that preserving, caring for, and renovating heritage is still possible and worth being sensitive to. Life after the life of architecture is possible, as proven by successful investments, which will certainly be discussed by our guests, representatives of both private initiatives and companies (Alicja Prodeus and Piotr Grochowski) and a local government body responsible for heritage preservation (Marcin Dawidowicz). They will be interviewed by an architectural journalist and initiator of campaigns aimed at caring for the modernist legacy (Julia Dragović).





We will learn how to support good initiatives from the “back seat.” What each and every one of us can do to effectively contribute to creating a positive image of valuable buildings and larger fragments of the urban fabric.



The conversation is conducted in cooperation with the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning.

The lecture will present the fascinating, intricate, and twist-filled story of the unfinished NOT office building, commonly known as the “Skeleton,” which has towered over the Mogilskie Roundabout in Krakow for the past 40 years.



Construction began in the 1970s as part of a plan to revitalize the Main Railway Station and create a district of skyscrapers in the Mogilskie Roundabout area – Krakow's Manhattan. However, the investment was interrupted shortly thereafter. “Szkieletor” became a symbol of the decline and arrogance of the communist system. Newspaper headlines described it as a bogeyman or a specter, while at the same time in Wrocław, the media portrayed the bus station in a similar way.



Despite their obvious differences, both structures symbolize the hope for the creation of a modern urban space. Both suffered a devastating defeat due to a lack of materials and financial resources, and today they primarily evoke nostalgia for something that never was. Over the following decades, while the “Szkieletor” structure stood abandoned, numerous concepts for its redevelopment were proposed. Fortunately, unlike the Wrocław station, one of them was implemented. The NOT office building gained a new lease on life – but did the “new look” really do it any good?



Event as part of the exhibition “Repulsive, Dirty, Evil,” co-organized with the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław.



MIASTOmovie recommends – an event as part of the project: Wrocław retold. Film and architectural narratives about a city reborn. The project is funded by the Municipality of Wrocław as part of the initiative “Wrocław – a city of dialogue, solidarity, and reconciliation.”

During the discussion following the screening of the film Chandigarh – The Power of Utopia, we will talk about what we can learn today from smaller and larger utopias and whether the creation of new ideas and projects of this nature still makes sense for us today.



We will consider whether looking at urban areas—projects designed as a whole, based on ideologically strong, often even utopian concepts—can inspire us, but also provide concrete solutions to the problems that cities face today. Looking at the Chandigarh project, both the one actually implemented by Le Corbusier and the one originally planned by Maciej Nowicki, we will also cite other examples of utopias – urban or social (in which the creation of physical space, of a specific type of architecture, was an important element) – which are still functioning and doing well. We will also look at those that were either not implemented or failed, and we will discuss what might have caused this. Art historian and architect Dorota Leśniak-Rychlak will lead a discussion with Urszula Jabłońska, writer and author of the reportage “Światy wzniesiemy nowe” (“We Will Build New Worlds”) about communities searching for a better tomorrow, Kacper Kępiński, critic and researcher of architecture, and Jerzy Łątka, an architect who believes in experimental projects.



The discussion is organized in cooperation with SARP Wrocław and the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning.

Anna Malinowska and Tomasz Słomczyński, both involved in journalism and reportage writing, have been discovering for many years images of cities close to their hearts—Katowice, Sosnowiec, Sopot—and regions—Kashubia and Żuławy—that are not always well known or obvious. This conversation will be a story about their personal strategies for working on history and identity, primarily in the context of reportages about areas with a post-German history, published by Wydawnictwo Czarne. Together with social urbanist Łukasz Harat, they will explore the topic of uncovering less readily remembered facts and the potential for each city and region to have a multicultural identity that influences their current shape and richness.



The meeting is organized in cooperation with Czarne Publishing House, A

Right after the screening of the film “27 Storeys – Alterlaa Forever” we will try to rediscover today's narratives related to large-panel housing estates. After years of perceiving them as soulless, too homogeneous, conducive to crime and anonymity, when we finally began to see their great advantages—many useful services, greenery, large spaces between buildings, and usually excellent transport links to the rest of the city – can we look at them as potential and a model for the housing estates currently being built? What does the film Alterlaa have that we do not want to see in Wrocław's Gądów, Poznań's Rataje or Warsaw's Targówek, and what could influence a successful revival with the participation of younger generations?





In the company of architecture researcher Anna Cymer, educator and promoter of multidisciplinary design Katarzyna Świętek, and writer Beata Chomątowska, we will practice recognizing spaces that are conducive to activity at every stage of our social development and prolonging life. We will consider how to talk about the large panel, what aspects to pay attention to, and what actions to take to create and show its diversity and attractiveness, despite its often monotonous or seemingly uninteresting appearance. Together, we will answer the question: which solutions from those ways of shaping community and space could we implement today? And is there anything we should pay particular attention to, because it may disappear imperceptibly from the landscape of large-panel housing estates?





The discussion is organized in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw and the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning. The discussion is supported by the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.

Ten years after Anka Bieliz and Kuba Żary launched the VOID project, we return to the places we looked at particularly closely in 2015—spaces that, as a result of war damage and post-war management, were stripped of their former significance and have not been given a new function for decades.

Several months of activities as part of the first stage of the project were an attempt to raise questions about the transformation of Wrocław's architectural and urban fabric over the last century and its impact on the perception of public space, the formation of bonds with it, as well as possible ways of shaping the image of a city so strongly imbued with the influences of the past. It was also an analysis of the reasons for many failures in this area and a contribution to the discussion—which has been ongoing for years in large European cities—about the meaning and scope of historical reconstruction.

Artistic interventions in space and meetings with audiences, which were part of the “VOID” project, allowed us to examine the social perception of the problem of “voids” in the city. We addressed the issues of lost symbolic value, the role of ruins in the landscape, the planning of orphaned space, and unrealized urban concepts. We asked questions about what, how, and whether it is worth reconstructing at all, leaving open to all users of the city the issue of the status quo of semantic, functional, and symbolic voids in the contemporary landscape.

In 2025, we will return to these ambivalent places – for some, marked by the curse of eternal undevelopment, for others, possessing the charm of open space in a dense city. During a joint walk, we will talk about how we perceive them today, and we will also see which of them have undergone a radical metamorphosis and which are still waiting for a better future.



MIASTOmovie recommends – an event as part of the project: Wrocław retold. Film and architectural narratives about a reborn city. The project is funded by the Municipality of Wrocław as part of the initiative “Wrocław – a city of dialogue, solidarity, and reconciliation.”

The meeting with the researcher, curator, and author of the book “Futerał. O urządzaniu mieszkań w PRL-u” (The Case: On Interior Design in the People's Republic of Poland) will be hosted by Aldona Mioduszewska, marketing director at Galeria Wnętrz DOMAR and design lecturer.

We will challenge the stereotypes that have been circulating for years in stories about how apartments were used and decorated in communist Poland. We will take a look at Agata Szydłowska's enormous journalistic, research, and archival work in unearthing facts and verifying myths. We will find out what surprised her most about the most enduring images from that period, what was satisfying about discovering previously unknown facts, and what tools—images, stories, repetitive propaganda messages—were used to construct the narrative of a modernizing society in post-war Poland.



The meeting is organized in cooperation with Czarne Publishing House and DOMAR Interior Design Gallery.

The battle between modernism and historicism in architectural discourse continues. Balanced opinions, close to those of American architect and neoclassicism advocate Allan Greenberg: "By recognizing that [...] both classical and modernist architecture have produced masterpieces and that both have strengths and weaknesses, we will be able to better understand both. Only then will we see that classicism is modern in essence and that modernist architecture, in its noble elements, is in fact classical." These views do not seem to be very popular on internet forums or in specialist discussions commenting on new investments.



After the screening of the film Where to With History?, we will try to follow Greenberg and meet in the middle to appreciate the palimpsestic nature of our cities. This will be facilitated by journalist Bogna Świątkowska, who will discuss the value of accepting different styles in architecture and the landscape around us with Joanna Majczyk, an architect and researcher of architecture and urban planning, especially socialist realism, and Aleksandra Paradowska, an art historian and researcher of the links between architecture and politics.



Referring to the situations presented in the film, we will also consider the extent to which architecture can shape political attitudes or, on the contrary, how it can be appropriated by certain worldviews or movements. What ways do we have of constructing narratives about the identity of cities by investing in the renovation or reconstruction of architecture in a particular style that is important to a given nationality? What does the growing aversion to neo-modernism among representatives of conservative thought in Poland, their sympathy for all reconstruction initiatives, and their calls for the creation of new architecture in historicist styles testify to?

Supported by the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation.

OReferring to the decision-making processes and tools shown in the film “Emergent City”, we will discuss the changes that have taken place in Poland over the years in the definition, social perception, and implementation of phenomena such as participation and gentrification. How are concepts such as the creative district or the 15-minute city perceived and what are the real possibilities for implementing them in our conditions?

We will consider which communities and the challenges associated with their presence should be the focus of our attention when planning investments and local interactions in our neighborhoods. Does awareness of intersectionality really help us today to look differently at top-down processes that would empower some groups without threatening others? We will also try to answer the question of how to wisely combine stories about friendly, diverse cities or neighborhoods with real actions—tailored to our conditions and possibilities.

The discussion will feature: Carolina Pietyra, strategist and coordinator of processes around the creative district of Wesoła in Krakow; Alina Szeptycka, activist and Plenipotentiary of the Mayor of Wrocław for Equal Treatment; Borys Martela, researcher and practitioner of participation; and Andrzej Jaworski, architect working on participatory projects.

The conversation will be interpreted into Polish Sign Language.

The meeting is organized in cooperation with the Department of Social Diversity of the City of Wrocław.

The contemporary Polish housing market is dominated by commercial offers. The public debate on housing reflects models of power and value systems, and essentially boils down to a discussion of whether housing is a right or a commodity.



In her presentation, Marta Baranowska will look at advertisements for housing estates (using the example of the primary market in Warsaw) through the prism of the values referred to by their senders, i.e., developers. In a study conducted in 2023 for her master's thesis and an article based on it, published in 2025, the author takes the position of an observer, trying to go beyond the simple opposition of right and commodity and the slogans repeated in the media: concrete jungle, patho-development, micro-apartment. She does not track down errors and inaccuracies, but rather reflects on how new places and new housing estates are described.



Her point of reference is the idea of home as a refuge, with the awareness that the image of the dream that a home represents is much more complex. It is influenced both by socio-economic conditions, including the context of transformation or the echoes of the pandemic closer to home, as well as by individual history. The complex visual and linguistic messages that make up advertising campaigns for housing estates create new places and new meanings, but also draw on trends and, on the other hand, on history. How do developers talk about housing estates and apartments? What do they use to build their narrative, what names do they create, what do they refer to? To what extent do they create reality, and to what extent do they refer to (real) needs?



The meeting is organized in cooperation with SARP Wrocław and the Fandom Foundation.

Architect Agnieszka Tomaszewicz, in her commentary on the film “Cvartala” will introduce us to the context of the ideas and values of socialist realism embedded in architecture. These were ideas that were only indicated on paper, but also those that had a chance to manifest themselves in architecture and urban planning at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s.



We will hear about the origins of the style and the symbolism that permeated the designs of the time, created in the spirit of the doctrine that was supposed to promote the construction of a new, post-war society in the Eastern Bloc countries. We will look at the narratives that were used to feed the public through the construction of buildings and entire complexes in this style in Poland and Romania, and we will find out if there were any significant differences between the two countries in the implementation of these plans.



We will also verify for whom, in theory and in practice, new, high-quality spaces located close to city centers were built, and what kind of shared services, intended to influence the creation of a new socialist community, were located in the new housing estates.



The lecture is organized in cooperation with the Romanian Cultural Institute in Poland.

Cancelled competitions, overestimated and suspended investments, projects lying in drawers for years after being selected for implementation. We know that there are many such cases, and that different factors are responsible for each particular turn of events. But sometimes it seems that some buildings are more fortunate than others, while other designers constantly have obstacles thrown in their path...



Immediately after the screening of the film “Building Bastille,” urban planner and popularizer of modernist heritage Mateusz Parużyński will present his subjective selection of the greatest architectural mistakes – whether they result from overly exuberant ambitions that are not matched by real possibilities, a distorted image of social needs, or ideas that are fascinating but completely alien to the local cultural context, which have been attempted to be implemented locally. We will also learn about examples of mistakes that brought positive surprises – despite the reluctance of specialists, they appealed to the public's tastes. We will also attempt to determine whether, in the case of architecture, we can speak of a specific aura of a building or powers that cannot be explained rationally, which may attract or repel us.



The lecture is organized in cooperation with the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning.