How can dreams be made tangible?

Abstract

Things that are planned for eternity are subject to the cramp of perfectionism and slow down spontaneous action. This can lead to boredom or even sadness in the city ... How can we make secret wishes come true immediately?

After studying architecture at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design (ABK), Lukasz Lendzinski and Peter Weigand founded the umschichten collective. Together with Alper Kazokoglu, they have been working on projects at the interface between culture, architecture, and urban development for a better future since 2008. Their work ranges from the development of concepts through to structural realization, which appears in the form of installations, interventions, exhibition designs, or furniture in urban and protected spaces. Based on the question ‘How can we make themes spatially tangible?’, spatial sketches and 1:1 models are used to discuss issues via haptic scenarios.

The artistic practice of umschichten is characterized by explicit references to current architectural and urban policy discourses in which building culture and social issues are negotiated. It deals with aspects of socioecological transformation and resource-conserving construction. Questions of co-productive urban development, inclusion, and participation form current thematic frameworks. Works are often created in collaboration with non-profit organizations, as well as with partners from industry and experts from inclusion pools or neighborhoods. They are characterized by a strong relation to practice, taking into account real and material conditions as well as the specific possibilities on site.

The projects use all media of architecture to show alternative approaches, solutions or scenarios for our environment. Using the means of art, very specific sculptural or conceptual artefacts are created that attract thematic attention in order to reveal the discourses to which they refer and make their relevance visible. The conceptual approach to these themes, which are developed in an intensive exchange with local actors, allows for a wide range of structural objects, from urban development to interior spaces.

The practical background requires precise craftsmanship, with an emphasis on detail, materiality, and the structural connection between individual components of the design. It is this highly precise manual production that gives the designs, in addition to their aesthetic quality, credibility as real physical constructs.

The projects are created together with clients from the public sector – from urban development departments to school building authorities – or with representatives from the private sector or at the invitation of art and cultural institutions such as the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau or the Wiener Festwochen theater festival.

In the lecture, projects will be used to explain how conceptual focal points emerge from complex framework conditions and how they relate to the built sculpture.

About the lecturer

Lukasz Lendzinski has received several grants and prizes in the context of umschichten, including from the Akademie Schloss Solitude and the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art Warsaw, as well as first prize in the Marianne Brandt Competition for Material Effects. In addition to being documented in their own catalogs, his projects have also been reported on extensively in other publications, most recently in the 2024 edition of the Transurban Residency or the 2023 publication Angst Ekel Scheitern (Urbanophil Verlag).

In addition to having a successful practice, Lukasz has also been active in teaching since 2010. He was a visiting professor at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG) in 2019 and currently teaches at the Institute for Media and Design at TU Braunschweig. He lives and works in Hamburg.