TŁO
Background Check
Conversations with emerging Polish architects
Architecture and the climate crisis. Social housing. Design as speculation and experiment. What are young architects about?
During the series of meetings, three selected architectural studios will talk about their work ethos, selected projects, how they find their place in the Polish architectural scene, what being progressive means to them, and how they manage to survive in challenging professional and economic conditions. Each meeting consists of a regular session, during which the designers will talk about the theoretical principles and practical aspects of their work, and a discussion, which will be moderated by the series’ host, architect Michał Sikorski of the studio Tło. The meetings will not be recorded or broadcast. The authors are interested in intimate meetings in “the real,” in actual exchange and listening to each other.
The protagonist of the first meeting (7 November 2024 at 18:30) will be the Prolog studio, operating since 2017. Currently consisting of Mirabela Jurczenko, Bartosz Kowal, Marek Martynowicz, Wojciech Mazan, Bartłomiej Poteralski, Apolonia Slesarow, Wiktor Sawoch, and Agata Werochowska, Prolog’s practice is not limited to architectural design. They frame each project with a broader theoretical context by publishing articles, staging exhibitions, and conducting workshops.
For the second meeting, Tło invited Studio Widoki (21 November 2024 at 18:30), i.e. Milena Trzcińska, Łukasz Stępnik, and Dominika Bednarek. The studio works with the concept of typicality in architecture. It is interested in social housing, as well as how to use design tools to deal with the climate and economic crisis.
The third meeting (28 November 2024 at 18:30) will be with Ambient, a studio established in 2022 on the initiative of Magdalena Pios. For the Ambient designers, the priority is to reduce the negative impact of architecture on the environment. Therefore, when designing, they focus on the efficient use of resources: space, energy, water, building materials. They use prefabricated technologies and low-emission materials, such as wood.
The host of the series, TŁO, is a Warsaw-based studio run by Michał Sikorski, which uses the work of urban planners and landscape architects in architectural design. TŁO designs public buildings and spaces. It has published research on university campus space and has also curated the exhibition Poetics of Necessity at the Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale in 2023.
