Where did the term amplifying nature come from? What does it mean that light oscillation, gravity and water circulation are materials of architecture? Where in the history of Polish architecture do we look for planetary design? Can a building be as dynamic as a climate? What has the roof got us used to and can we get unused to it?
The book that accompanies the Amplifying Nature exhibition by CENTRALA and curator Anna Ptak with the collaboration of Iza Tarasewicz and Jacek Damięcki at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia, uses examples of local Warsaw projects, proposing a reconfiguration of the narratives on architecture-in-nature and nature-in-architecture. In its optics, a planetary scale is necessary for architectural analysis: the Earth in a geological-astronomical system as a system supporting life as we know it.
The structure of the book is based on six parts, corresponding to six areas of the composite concept of amplifying nature. Issues are discussed in conversations with researchers from various felds: palaeobiologist and geologist Jan Zalasiewicz, geographer Matthew Gandy, biologist Monika Słupecka-Ziemilska, writer Amitav Ghosh and architects Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis (CENTRALA), and Jacek Damięcki. Other articles include a selective review of the studio’s previous projects seen from the perspective of the material analysis of architecture by Magdalena Roszkowska, as well as an introduction by the curator, discussing this particular practice-based theory.
The publication is enriched with illustrative material—original photographs by Anna Zagrodzka, original diagrams and associative atlases of visual archival materials.
The book is designed by Krzysztof Pyda.