Viewpoints, towers, paths, benches, monuments, maps and signs. Architecture begins with the simplest gesture of shaping space – creating places that invite us to pause, choose a path, rest, but also to look around, listen, experience and feel a sense of wonder. We invite you to reflect with us on the relationship between architecture and landscape, travel and personal discovery.
Small-scale architecture can be found in landscapes in places that are both significant and ordinary, familiar and unexpected, and sometimes difficult to access. Poland is characterised by remarkable topographical and environmental diversity. Different spatial forms allow us to experience the landscape more fully – from views of the sea from the top of a lighthouse to panoramas of mountain peaks seen from a viewing terrace or tower. Cultural diversity, in turn, finds expression in monuments, sculptures and other artistic interventions, whose forms convey socially significant meanings rooted in a particular time and place.
We look at different types of educational and tourist facilities, as well as places of remembrance, examining their forms and the ways in which they shape our experience of a place. We propose just one of many possible ways of identifying and organising the small-scale architectural structures and other spatial forms found across Poland, created at sites of geographical, landscape, historical or symbolic significance.
Poniżej naturalniejsza wersja, utrzymana w tonie instytucjonalnym, ale bez nadmiernej dosłowności:
A Travel Notebook
Zachwyt (Wonder) features inspiring places worth visiting – and worth stopping to appreciate. The selected sites can be a starting point for further journeys, but also an invitation to explore your immediate surroundings. Zachwyt may be hiding just around the corner. That is why we do not prescribe a specific route or show photographs of the featured sites. Instead, the illustrations merely suggest their forms, leaving room for your own interpretation. With Zachwyt, we want to encourage a break from the digital world and invite you to discover, experience and engage with the landscape through architecture.
Use the notebook to plan, take notes, draw – and put into words and preserve what you see and feel. You can also take inspiration from texts by Agnieszka Pajączkowska and Adam Robiński, which show how every journey offers an opportunity to record thoughts and emotions, and to express yourself through words and images. You can also use Zachwyt in any other way you choose.
How to get Zachwyt?
The available copies of Zachwyt in Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków and Gdynia have now run out. We encourage you to follow the Institute’s website and social media channels – there should be at least one more opportunity to get a copy of Zachwyt this year!
IMPORTANT: The notebooks will be available for collection at partner institutions in four locations across Poland, following prior confirmation, on selected days and during designated hours, no earlier than April. We will contact registered participants directly.
Have a question?
Email us at komunikacja@niaiu.pl
Colophon
Concept: Marta Baranowska
Content Development: Marta Baranowska, Aleksandra Czapla
Production: Aleksandra Czapla
Graphic Design, Typesetting and Layout: Katarzyna Nestorowicz
Illustrations: Katarzyna Nestorowicz
Editing and Proofreading: Natalia Raczkowska
Collaboration: Katarzyna Kucharczuk, Dominik Witaszczyk
Communications: Dominik Witaszczyk, Aleksandra Zaszewska
Object Descriptions: Marta Baranowska, Aleksandra Czapla
Additional Texts: Agnieszka Pajączkowska, Adam Robiński
The cyanotypes featured on the cover and on pages 9, 16–19 and 132–135 were created during workshops by Marta Baranowska, Aleksandra Czapla, Katarzyna Nestorowicz, Dominik Witaszczyk and Aleksandra Zaszewska.
Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage as part of the comprehensive educational, exhibition and publishing project “Architektura bliżej” (“Architecture Closer”).
