The fifth edition of the New Generations Festival - Building the Atlas is a project by the Cultural Association New Generations. Organised and curated by The City of Warsaw, Gianpiero Venturini of Itinerant Office and Katarzyna Dorda, it took place in Warsaw from 15 to 17  November 2018. 

The event was supported with the patronage of Oddział Warszawski Stowarzyszenia Architektów Polskich, Narodowy Instytut Architektury i Urbanistyki, Mazowiecka Okręgowa Izba Architektów Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej and with the partnership of the Embassy of the Netherlands in Warsaw and Stowarzyszenie Akademickie WA PW. It was hosted at the BABKA DO WYNAJĘCIA.

Day 1: Re-imagining Warsaw workshop

Titled "Building the Atlas," the New Generations Festival gathered more than 25 local and international emerging practices that have been involved in developing various kinds of activities. More than 300 people participated in the scheduled programmes, which include the inauguration event, a two-day workshop revolving around the re-imagination of the future of Warsaw, a series of Speed Talks, key-note lectures by two distinguished guest speakers and short conferences among the guests on the three topics of the Festival: Organisation, Business, Media.

Day 1: Inauguration

The inauguration of the Festival took place on 15 November with the participation of Marlena Happach - City Architect of Warsaw, Director of the Architecture and Spatial Planning Department, Katarzyna Dorda - Landscape Architect and Producer.

Gianpiero Venturini, Founder of Itinerant Office and Director of New Generations, said: "It was an important experience for the New Generations platform. With this edition of the Festival we have taken an important step to export the format of New Generations abroad, facilitating a network of international exchanges and collaborations."

Philippe Nathan on the stage of New Generations Festival 2018

Both the local and international practices invited by the festival presented their work and shared their views in relation to the 3 topics of the festival.

Organisation: Enter Studio (IT), CENTRALA (PL), CIVIC - The Cloud Collective (NL) and NAS-DRA Conscious Design (PL) shared the organisational structure of their architectural firm. The discussion highlighted various organisational models, for example the cooperative, a more collaborative model that introduces a horizontal way of working that focuses less on hierarchy and gives each member the same importance and level of responsibilities. 

DEREIN-Giulia Tognocchi on the stage of New Generations Festival 2018

Business: 2001 (LU), Atelier Starzak Strebicki (PL), PiM.studio Architects (UK), SET Architects (IT), Wolfhouse Productions (RO) and OOIIO architecture (ES) talked about the difficulties faced by a young and emerging practice when first entering the working world. OOIIO architecture spoke about its struggles in finding the first clients and the eventual economic stability that came with their first project realisations. SET architects shared about their strategy of using architectural competitions as a tool to test their ideas, while alternating that with obtaining private commissions that give financial stability to the studio. 2001 shared a detailed economic analysis of their practice through an excel presentation reviewing the investments and earnings during their first years. 

Media: Parasite 2.0 (IT), BudCud (PL), ABACO (FR), Beton (PL) and “Pool is Cool” / Collective Disaster (BE) discussed their approach to architectural communication. Parasite 2.0 talked about their project “MAXXI Temporary School: The museum is a school. A school is a battleground” which introduces the concept of “Instagram architecture” through a series of scenic designs realised in the external areas of MAXXI museum in Rome. BudCud (PL) presented their works focusing on the studio’s editorial activity that consists of their written articles, publications and illustrations for communication purposes. “Pool is Cool” / Collective Disaster (BE) highlighted the crucial role of communication tools to raise awareness for their campaign’s objective of advocating public swimming and the construction of public swimming pools in Brussels.

Day 2: Workshop results

Two key-note speakers took the stage to give their speeches on 16 and 17 November. Ethel Baraona Pohl, Director of dpr-barcelona (ES), gave a lecture titled Dissidence from Standards or how to subvert Capitalist Surrealism, while Claudia Pasquero, Co-founder of ecoLogicStudio (UK), introduced her international works comprising of installations and architecture that is focused on the relation between technology and nature.

Day 3: Evening activities, public debates on Media

During the first day of Festival many enthusiastic students and professionals took part in the Re-imagining Warsaw workshop with the support of the international tutors SET architects (IT), A2P2 architecture & urban planning (PL), BudCud (PL), Civic / The Cloud Collective (NL) and CENTRALA (PL). 

The results have been shown through 3 presentations about the different working topics: advertisements, nature and planning. There were such ideas as "Faster Planning for a Slower City", "Psychedelic snow" or "Healthy Ads". For detailed information and presentation of the workshop results, please visit the New Generations website.

Day 3: Evening activities, public debates on Media

Last but not least, 4 participants selected through an open call organised by the New Generations Festival had the opportunity to share their works during the Speed Talks night. The winners of the open call presented their personal research and projects in the format of short 8-minute public lectures titled “Speed Talks”. 

Among them, Giorgia Scognamiglio shared her investigation on architecture collectives; Simone Barbi analysed his own work through representative concepts and images; DEREIN/// described the colour blue that characterises the graphic illustration of their projects and Marco Ferrari / Spaces like Actions shared an open-source visual atlas - a dictionary for untranslatable spaces. 

World Architecture Community is Media Partner for the New Generations Festival 2018.

All images © Kuba Mozolewski

> via New Generations Festival