IN-HABITATION 2012. Garden city, gated city
13.09.12 - 10.02.13
The National Museum in Krakow - Main Building, al. 3 Maja 1 

Organisation: Institute of Architecture, National Museum in Kraków
Curators: Dorota J?druch (National Museum in Kraków/ Institute of Architecture), Dorota Le?niak-Rychlak, Agata Wi?niewska, Micha? Wi?niewski (Institute of Architecture)
Design project: medusa group
Graphic design: Joanna Sowula
Exhibition coordinator: Iza Wa?ek

For two decades we have been witnessing the fulfilment of people's dreams about a house with a garden. After 1989, new opportunities appeared offered by the free market, the developing loan system, developers' entrepreneurship and Polish people's resourcefulness.

Let's think how the fulfilment of these dreams, Wa??sa's "taking matters into one's own hands" affected the shape of Polish cities. Why, instead of a garden city at least garden suburbs, do we have a city of fences? Barriers, gates, fences, plates of security companies and cameras proliferate... Who is fencing themselves off from whom? Why do we destroy our shared space? Why is the city spreading without a plan and a suburban house is in its current form a mere caricature of the original ideal of contact with nature. Why do we see advertisements for housing estates, the names of which evoke a vision of living in harmony with nature and trees growing in such an area are the first victims of the implementation of these projects. How do enclaves of people with a similar status separated from the remaining part of the space arise? Where and how do people staying behind the actual and metaphorical wall?

„IN-HABITATION 2012" is a project devoted to changes which occurred in contemporary residential architecture (including urban planning), their connections with the inhabitants' identity and progressing changes in the city's space and the gradually forming social stratification. The project includes sociological research and the preparation of an exhibition. The exhibition is accompanied by a garden installation situated at the square in front of the façade of the Main Building of the National Museum.