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.”