More about Studio 11

Andrew Peckham, Dusan Decermic

This year the studio has been focused on projects in Wroclaw in Poland (previously German Breslau). Our initial interest was in the international competition for a new Museum of Contemporary Art, which was the focus of our Dip 1 students who reinterpreted the brief and site chosen for the project.

Research into the history of the city (largely rebuilt post-war) and its current economy, identified the twin themes of ‘reproduction’ and ‘sites of production’ which informed subsequent projects. A series of thematic studies on ‘exhibiting practices’ (Dip 1), and research excavating, representing and embedding ‘found objects’ (Dip 2), preceded visiting the city. Various surveys were carried out confronting the city as palimpsest, the concept of an island-city, and post-industrial realities on its periphery.

Dip 2 thesis projects ranged from a concern for environmental imperatives; recycling; showcasing revival of the textile industry; health care initiatives; to counter projects reinterpreting a proposed ‘music forum’, and the revival of the landscape of the river Oder for leisure and tourism. Several Dip 1 students concluded the year in returning their interpretation of a ‘Polish Institute’ onto sites here in London, and elsewhere, related to the expatriate Polish community.