New Exhibition: Plantstoria! - Instytut Pileckiego

A Story of Architecture, Nature, and National Socialist Colonialism

It’s time for another special exhibition! We are pleased to invite you to the opening of Plantstoria: A Story of Architecture, Nature, and National Socialist Colonialism. After being shown in three Polish cities, it’s now high time to present it to the people of Berlin as well. This is anything but an ordinary exhibition—just as diverse as its title suggests, and it certainly lives up to it!

Conceived by Exercising Modernity alumna and scholarship holder Barbara Nawrocka, the exhibition also serves as a small tribute to our Exercising Modernity program, now in its sixth year.

Date: Thursday, 30 October, 7 PM
Venue: Pilecki Institute Berlin, Pariser Platz 4A, 10117 Berlin
Registration: https://forms.gle/JfQzhSmZ7DTm9xjd9

The exhibition explores the history of a residential district in the Polish city of Ciechanów, built during the German occupation in the Second World War. Similar housing districts, colloquially referred to as Berlinki or poniemieckie (“formerly German”), can still be found in many Polish towns today. The exhibition’s curator and architect, Barbara Nawrocka, examines this architectural legacy through the lens of nature and landscape, revealing how plant life, history, politics, and collective memory intertwine.

The district was conceived in the early 1940s as a so-called “garden suburb” — a housing estate for German officials and their families in the capital of the newly created Regierungsbezirk Zichenau. The concept drew on the utopian and originally progressive ideals of the Garden City movement initiated by British social reformer Ebenezer Howard, but here it was transformed into an instrument of National Socialist colonization and propaganda.

Nawrocka weaves an eclectic, multidimensional narrative: reflections on the contradictory, simultaneously modernist and reactionary nature of National Socialism are interlaced with ideas reminiscent of Bruno Latour. In doing so, she symbolically gives plants a voice and perspective of their own.

Following its presentations in Gdynia, Ciechanów, and Wrocław—where it was shown at the Museum of Architecture, Poland’s only museum dedicated to architecture—Plantstoria received widespread acclaim. Architecture magazines such as Architektura Murator and Architecture Snob described it as one of the most striking projects of the past season. We are therefore particularly pleased to now present it to the Berlin audience.

Plantstoria was realized by the Pilecki Institute Berlin as part of the program Exercising Modernity – Ćwiczenie Nowoczesności.

More on Exercising Modernity

Exercising Modernity is an interdisciplinary intellectual and artistic exchange program established in 2019, dedicated to exploring the history of modernity in Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on art and architecture. Originally conceived as a German-Polish-Israeli cooperation project, its thematic scope has gradually expanded to include countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, and others. The program aims to examine and highlight the contributions of Poland and the wider Central and Eastern European region to the global history of modernity.

Particular attention is devoted to culture – especially architecture – as a space where key social processes, perspectives, ambitions, and hopes intersect and find expression. Exercising Modernity fosters critical engagement with historical and contemporary narratives about Central and Eastern Europe, and challenges traditional political, cultural, and geographical divisions between “East” and “West” in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The project’s core components include the interdisciplinary Exercising Modernity Academy and the Cultural Scholarship Programme, which is held annually and addressed to the Academy’s alumni. In addition, Exercising Modernity features a range of public events – lectures, discussions, conferences, and exhibitions – organized in cooperation with local and international partners.

Alle Fotos bis hier: (C) Marta Sobala
Ab hier: (C) Grzegorz Karkoszka