The exhibition "Plantstory: A Narrative about Architecture, Nature and National Socialist Colonial Policy" explores the history of a residential district in Ciechanów, Poland, built during the German occupation in World War II. Similar housing estates—colloquially known as "Berlinki" or poniemieckie ("post-German")—remain scattered throughout Polish cities today. Curator and architect Barbara Nawrocka examines this architectural legacy through the lens of nature and landscape, revealing how vegetation, history, politics, and collective memory intersect.

The neighbourhood was conceived in the early 1940s as a garden suburb—a settlement designed for German civil servants and their families in the capital of the newly created administrative district of Zichenau. While the concept drew inspiration from the utopian, originally progressive ideas of the garden city movement pioneered by British social reformer Ebenezer Howard, it was weaponized here as an instrument of National Socialist colonization and propaganda.

In doing so, Nawrocka weaves together a broad and ambitious narrative: explorations of Nazism's contradictory nature—simultaneously modernist and reactionary—converge with reflections on nature's subjectivity (echoing Bruno Latour) while symbolically amplifying the voice of plants themselves. Following presentations in Gdynia, Ciechanów, and Wrocław at the Muzeum Architektury—Poland's sole architecture museum—Plantstoria gained significant recognition within the field. Leading architecture publications including Architektura Murator and Architecture Snob hailed it as among the season's most compelling projects. We are delighted to bring this important exhibition to Berlin audiences.

Opening: Thursday, October 30, 7 p.m.
Location: Pilecki Institute Berlin, Pariser Platz 4A, 10117 Berlin
On view: through the end of February

https://berlin.instytutpileckiego.pl/de/events/plantstoria