The project Amplifying Nature is based on the premise that architecture is part of processes occurring on a planetary scale. According to the authors of the exhibition — curator Anna Ptak and architects Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis of the Centrala collective — it serves not only to offer protection from nature, but is inherently connected with phenomena such as gravitation, water circulation, or the day-night cycle.

The authors were inspired by nature-amplifying designs from the history of Polish architecture: the Warszawianka sports complex, inscribed in the Vistula River escarpment, designed by a Jerzy Sołtan-led team of the Art-and-Research Workshops of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (an example of tapping into geological and hydrological processes), Zofia and Oskar Hansens’ Szumin House (circadian rhythm), and Jacek Damięcki’s visionary, unrealised design of the Floating Rotary Pavilion (water displacement). The same architectural philosophy is reflected in two original designs by Centrala — the vertically open Cabrio House and the Rain Pavilion. Staged in association with sculptor Iza Tarasewicz, the exhibition is considered by its authors as a kind of diagram — interpreting the team’s research, it sheds light on the various relationships that architecture is embroiled in.

The installation utilises the phenomenon of water displacement and uses water as an information medium — an environment for drifting architectural models. Throughout the half-year duration of the show, the exhibition space will be actively shaped by factors including water, daily and annual light rhythms, or viewer interaction, demonstrating how architecture is inclusive in processes of physical change.

The presentation at the Polish Pavilion is accompanied by the book Amplifying Nature. The Spatial Imagination of Architecture in the Anthropocene, edited by Anna Ptak and designed by Krzysztof Pyda.