BWA Europe 2025 Festival: residency of Jurga Daubaraitė and Jonas Žukauskas

Within the framework of the BWA Europe Festival, organised as part of the celebrations of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, from 7 to 20 July we will host representatives of the Lithuanian collective Neringa Forest Architecture: Jonas Žukauskas and Jurga Daubaraitė. In the context of the space of the former sewage treatment fields in Wrocław and the new venue of BWA Wrocław, they will address the issue of regenerative design and regenerative strategies, also taking into account the perspective of children.

The former sewage treatment fields in Wrocław, located in the vast fields in the north of the city – today an example of naturoculture and a future reserve – as well as the Rędziński Forest located in its area, have been the focus of BWA Wrocław’s activities for several years. Jurga Daubaraitė and Jonas Žukauskas will explore the unique landscape of both the aforementioned fields and the forest on the basis of the ‘Culture of Regeneration’ programme and in relation to the concept of resilience.  

In the face of climate change, it seems legitimate to us to support city residents to adapt, build resilience and regenerate by combining practices from the fields of culture, art, architecture, design and science, hence the importance in our view of exploring urban ecosystems and local interspecies communities, drawing on but also caring for them, spreading knowledge about them.

Therefore, the aim of the residency is to exchange knowledge and experiences and build relationships between the Neringa Forest Architecture collective and our institution’s team, artists, experts, and residents of Wrocław – specifically in the context of and within the former sewage treatment fields. During the activities focused on this area, as well as in two spaces of BWA Wrocław – the Dizajn gallery, which serves as a city sanatorium and is preparing for reopening, and the SIC! gallery, where work is underway on a project for the institution’s new venue – we would like to refer to the concept of regenerative design and regenerative strategies, including the perspective of children.

At the end of the residency, we invite you to a meeting with Jurga Daubaraitė and Jonas Žukauskas. We will write about it soon.

NERINGA FOREST ARCHITECTURE – Jurga Daubaraitė and Jonas Žukauskas, are a duo of spatial practitioners currently based in Vilnius. Through architectural, curatorial and research projects they aim to create new relations between societies and their environment, past and future. 

Jurga and Jonas curated the exhibition ‘The Baltic Material Assemblies’ at the AA Gallery and RIBA in London (2018), and were co-curators of The Baltic Pavilion — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2016), and co-editors of ‘The Baltic Atlas’ published by Sternberg (2016). 

Together with Egija Inzule, they initiated Neringa Forest Architecture (NFA) at Nida Art Colony in 2019, as a research and residency programme that reflects and investigates the Curonian Spit cultural landscape forests as a case study, considering it as an entanglement of ecologies, representations, and both colonial and industrial narratives. In 2023 NFA curated and designed the Children’s Forest Pavilion — Lithuania at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2023, and in 2024 the playscape-exhibition ‘Les pièces de la forêt at arc en rêve’, Bordeaux and were shortlisted for the New European Bauhaus Prize 2024 ‘Re-connecting with Nature’. Since 2023 they have led a COOP study group at the Dutch Art Institute, DAI and are working on the publishing initiative Kirvarpa Books.

The project is part of the BWA Europe Festival organised and co-financed by the National Centre for Culture and the University of the National Education Commission in Kraków as part of the celebrations of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union.