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About the Polish pavilion at LDB

In times of crisis, especially when available resources change and shrink, the world relies on new communities and new processes. Designers have to divert from established aesthetics to basic functionality, but manage to remain creative in their work. The Polish exhibition at London Design Biennale aims to reinterpret objects and tools that spontaneously emerge in grassroots humanitarian aid activities. 

Here, a building element, the humble window, transforms from waste into a chance for safety. It becomes a transmitter of new relationships, a barometer of the most urgent needs. The window serves as a starting point for a discussion about new aesthetics in design in times of sudden geopolitical shifts.

1-25 June 2023, Somerset House, London
Organised by the Adam Mickieiwcz Institute Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale is entitled “The Poetics of Necessity”. photo © Jędrzej Sokołowski / IAM

The installation is inspired by the WINDOW project – a call to action to collect reusable windows, given by Poles to Ukrainians stripped of dignified living conditions as a result of war. 

Gifting windows, a process that connects donors and receivers in geographically surprising duets, enables to trace the trajectory of a window from home to home which spans over thousands of kilometers. Objects that remained dormant in Polish garages, hastily removed during renovations, become valuable treasures, not only from an environmental perspective – here, human beings, their dignity and survival, are in the very center.

1-25 June 2023, Somerset House, London
Organised by the Adam Mickieiwcz Institute Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale is entitled “The Poetics of Necessity”. photo © Jędrzej Sokołowski / IAM

The pavilion asks questions around the durability of the objects on display, built for times of crisis and insecurity – and what is expected of a modern designer at these moments? The window installation at the heart of the pavilion is just as shapeshifting and open as the collective images of Europe’s fate. In this world of shaken fundamentals, there is still space for empathy, new collaborations and ‘new poetics’, which attempt to grasp the complex emotional temperature and logic of our times.

1-25 June 2023, Somerset House, London
Organised by the Adam Mickieiwcz Institute Polish Pavilion at the London Design Biennale is entitled “The Poetics of Necessity”. photo © Jędrzej Sokołowski / IAM