Last semester, students of FA BUT under the guidance of architect Szymon Rozwałka addressed the issue of tourism in the spa town of Svinoústí. They presented their ideas through an art installation in the local swimming pool. The curator Andrzej Pawełczyk was so impressed by the projects that in collaboration with the Institute of Experimental Art of the FA BUT an exhibition was created combining art, architecture, critical and political thinking. The unique exhibition "The Space of Cyclical Change in Étienne-Louis Boullée's Paradigm - Where Utopias Live, Wolves Rage" will open the tenth anniversary of the Polish Gallery ms44 on 18 February 2023 at 18:00.

 "A number of concepts and architectural designs by students of the Institute of Experimental Design at the Faculty of Architecture of the Brno University of Technology, often utopian in their programmatic conception, will be presented in the context of the radical ideas of the classicist visionary Étienne-Louis Boullée," emphasises Andrzej Pawełczyk in the exhibition's annotation.

 

The subtitle "Where Utopias Live, Wolves Rage" is a metaphor demonstrating the changing context in which idealist projects can be considered. The symbolic figure of Étienne-Louis Boullée is a clear contemporary reference to what utopias can become when they are transformed into electoral programmes and act as a tool in the hands of café politicians.

 

Svinous has become a good mirror of the present for us. A present with its changing state, constant changes and new threats, such as climate change, the opening of the scissors between rich and poor, the precariat of the middle class, but also the current ills and characteristics of all of us, poor or rich, seeking security or freedom, Europeans or Eurosceptics. Traits among which we find fatigue and exhaustion. The fatigue of excess, of overload. Overwhelm existing only for itself, overwhelm without a goal.

 

The projects that the students worked on tried, with more or less success, to confront this contemporary situation. A present that requires us to focus not only on completely new problems, new threats, but also on new goals for architects and urban planners. 

 

The spa district of Svino Ústí, in its extreme, made it easier for us to search for these goals, to confront these threats. Our concentration floated freely around several key themes and concepts, which moved from one to another... at times challenging each other, sometimes in a paranoid-rational melange.

 

"For us, these key concepts became junkspace, cyclicality and climate change. All together they are fundamental forces that influence the present and future character of place. The relationships between them are not fixed and stable and therefore we cannot be sure of anything here. Except for one thing. Variability. Hence the title of this publication," adds Szymon Rozwałka, the exhibition's second curator and head of student projects.

 

Andrzej Pawełczyk

The exhibition will run from 18 February 2023 to 27 March 2023.

Gallery of Contemporary Art ms44 - Świnoujście 13 Armii krajowej Street

Curators:

Andrzej Pawełczyk

mgr inż. arch. Szymon Rozwałka

Faculty of Architecture Brno University of Technology Czech Republic

Institute of Experimental Design