Building a sense of local identity is an open-ended process. We are experiencing social, climate, political and technological changes that are also reflected in the spaces around us. The immediate exchange of information and globalisation, the blurring of geographical boundaries and the increasing uniformity of architecture have made questions of identity and local distinctiveness relevant once again.

Architecture provides a spatial record of the changes and aspirations of successive generations. For Poland, the past three decades have been a period of shaping its identity around new ideas and a new political and economic system. It has also been a time of intensive construction, changes to spatial planning regulations, new technological possibilities, improvements in the quality of architectural projects and the completion of projects that are important to local communities. Increasingly, buildings and public spaces are the result of a collaborative effort involving architects, investors, residents, artists and sociologists, becoming symbols of cooperation and responses to the needs of their users.

The first version of the map was created in 2019 as the culmination of the Identity. 100 Years of Polish Architecture exhibition series. The projects featured on the map were organised into the five categories explored in the exhibitions: Art, Power, Society, Transfer and Transformation.

For the new edition of the map, we decided to expand it with new projects and additional areas. The selection reflects the diversity and scale of the changes that have taken place across all regions of Poland from the 1990s to the present day.

The printed edition of A Mosaic of Local Identities will be available at selected locations featured on the map, as well as at partner institutions and organisations. Interested in a printed copy? Get in touch with us.

Local identity is never fixed – it is constantly evolving. We invite you to join conversations about how architecture expresses what makes a particular place or city unique.

Following the walks with architects and designers, the next part of the programme accompanying A Mosaic of Local Identities is a series of meetings. Conversations with invited guests – architects and designers, experts, researchers and enthusiasts of local architecture – will provide an opportunity to continue the discussion initiated by the Identity. 100 Years of Polish Architecture project and revisit the book of the same title, published in 2019. Here, identity is understood as a combination of experiences, choices and influences, as well as the ways in which contemporary practitioners engage in dialogue with the past. We can discover local identity through meetings and conversations, but we can also shape it and pass it on to future generations.

We will meet in Lublin, Opole and Bydgoszcz, highlighting the diversity of architectural experiences and approaches across Poland. In addition to their different geographical settings, each of these cities has its own set of cultural influences and social and economic conditions. All of these are reflected in both historic and contemporary architecture, as well as in the way space is organised on a larger scale through urban planning.

We begin in Lublin, where one of the editions of the Identity exhibition was presented in 2019. The exhibition looked at the city through the lens of housing estates designed in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the public buildings accompanying them, and the category of Society. Bydgoszcz hosted the first exhibition in the next edition of the series in 2022. There, we looked at the city both as the former “little Berlin” and as a Polish city with a distinct industrial heritage, which in recent years has been turning towards the Brda River flowing through it. On the A Mosaic of Local Identities map, Opole is represented by projects completed after 1989, including one of the first internationally acclaimed Polish buildings of recent decades: Robert Konieczny’s Aatrial House, designed by KWK Promes, now almost 20 years old.

The conversations will be moderated by Aldona Łaniewska-Wołłk, a journalist associated with Polish Radio whose work focuses, among other things, on architecture. The meetings will offer an opportunity to explore local identities through the experiences of our guests, while also considering how residents perceive and experience the spaces of their cities through architecture.

Meeting schedule:

As part of a series of walks with architects and designers, we will visit selected buildings and places featured on the A Mosaic of Local Identities map. Together with their creators, we will explore how these spaces function and how they have changed over time.

The walks are an opportunity to open up a space for conversation and raise awareness of the value and quality of local architecture and shared spaces. The series builds on the Exploring Contemporary Spaces with an Architect project, launched in 2018, and continues the Architecture in Action series held in 2023 as part of the Architecture Closer comprehensive project.

Identity. 100 Years of Polish Architecture is a project through which, since 2019, we have been exploring the phenomenon of Polish architecture and the changes it has undergone. It offers an opportunity to reflect on our surroundings and the quality of the spaces in which we live, while also promoting contemporary architecture and shared spaces.

Since 2019, in collaboration with local curators, we have explored selected cities across Poland: Kraków, Warsaw, Lublin, Poznań, Katowice, Bydgoszcz, Łódź, Szczecin, Gdańsk, Olsztyn and Radom. 

Map Update: Marta Baranowska, Kacper Kępiński
Production and Editing: Dominik Witaszczyk
Map Graphic Design and Visual Identity: Katarzyna Nestorowicz
Events Programme: Marta Baranowska, Aleksandra Czapla
Communications: Aleksandra Zaszewska, Dominik Witaszczyk
Original Map (2019): Curatorial Team of the Identity. 100 Years of Polish Architecture exhibitions