House for Culture

The House for Culture project shows the formal similarities between the buildings of kibbutzim and kolkhozes, erected in places hundreds of kilometers apart.
The project is a continuation of the author’s – characteristic – visual language, which focuses on frontal documentation of the repetition of forms in modernism architecture.
Manifesto
Illusions lost. An ex post manifesto for modern architecture
Photobook
The exhibition accompanies Nicolas Grospierre’s Photobook A House for Culture, published in 2022, which contains 139 photographs by Nicolas Grospierre taken in Israel, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It is enriched with critical essays by researchers Yuval Yaski, Marta Kalma and Pedro Gadanho, whose texts are illustrated by archival photographs and architectural plans.
Author
Nicolas Grospierre (born 1975) – architectural photographer and artist, grew up in France, has lived in Poland since 1999. Before taking up photography, he studied political science and sociology in Paris and London. In his work, he uses photography as a creative tool. He focuses on both documentary projects and conceptual issues. In works of a reportage nature, he often takes up the theme of collective memory and hopes associated with modernist architecture – he reaches for it at a time when the utopias accompanying this style have lost their power and importance. The conceptual part of his work is based on building a game played with the viewer, into which the viewer is invited through attractive – even sensual – images and installations.
Info
Opening
31.10.2024, 18:00
Date
31.10-17.11.2024
Opening hours
MON-SUN: 13:00-19:00
1st, 11th November closed
free entrance
Place







National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning
ul. Foksal 2
00-366 Warsaw
Colophon
Photographs and exhibition concept: Nicolas Grospierre
Scientific curator: prof. dr hab. arch. Bolesław Stelmach
Curator: Yuval Yasky
Exhibition design: Yamit Cohen, Yuval Yasky
Coordination: Kacper Kępiński, Kacper Tomaszewski, Mateusz Włodarek
Communication: Dominik Witaszczyk, Ola Zaszewska
Visual identity: Katarzyna Nestorowicz
Exhibition production: Artpath
Production of photographs: Banda Printshop
Authors of accompanying essays: Nicolas Grospierre, Owen Hatherley, Yuval Yasky
Translations: Natalia Raczkowska
Editing and proofreading: Urszula Drabińska
Co-organiser: Estonian Museum of Architecture
The exhibition is co-financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
The research towards and publication of the album A House for Culture were made possible through two grants by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.