Ships, Machines, Glass Houses – Residential Architecture of Interwar Poland and Italy

Organized: The City of Gdynia, Mirosław Studniak’s „Wytwórnia Pomysłów” and the Italian Cultural Institute in Warsaw

Michał Łukasik, a graduate of the Warsaw Film School and the Academy of Fine Arts, has been traveling through Poland and Italy for several years, photographing the most interesting examples of broadly defined modernist architecture, including rationalism, novecento, functionalism, and art deco. This exploration resulted in two exhibitions featuring his photographs, accompanying the 9th international academic conference „Modernism in Europe – Modernism in Gdynia.” This project continues with the exhibition „Ships, Machines, Glass Houses – Residential Architecture of Interwar Poland and Italy.”

In his project, the author compares the Italy of Benito Mussolini with the Poland of Józef Piłsudski. In both cases, modernism arose from completely different needs and took significantly different forms. However, in subsequent years, numerous similarities could be observed in both the building styles and the very perception of architecture by the authorities and architects of the time. The exhibitions will feature objects from Rome, Milan, Naples, Bari, Warsaw, Gdynia, Krakow, and Katowice, among others.