in the mood for the city is an exceptional exhibition for me, as it takes place inside the ŁAŹNIA 2 Centre for Contemporary Art, which I designed many years ago, which I then constructed together with an amazing, dedicated team, and which we opened for art in 2012. I want to return to the dialogical formula of this project. I want to reveal the hidden architectural dialogue that secretly constructed this space at the time. This was a dialogue between new interior design meant to house art and old architecture of a municipal bathhouse.
Today, 12 years later, I am constructing a new architectural meeting inside the white space of ŁAŹNIA 2. This time, its dialogical formula is open rather than hidden, to record our yearning for the city and manifest our longing for a space filled with relations, ambiences and events. In the white room of ŁAŹNIA 2, I am building a DIAFORM – a new dialogical form – which belongs to this place: this city, this building, and this room.
Jacek Dominiczak is a professor of art and architect, member of the Chamber of Architects of the Republic of Poland (IARP). He runs the Urban Interior Design Workshop at the Faculty of Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, dedicated to studies on advancing the architecture and urban planning of contemporary cities.
Professor Dominiczak works on the dialogical formula of architectural ethics. He devised the Dialogical City theory and tools useful in its design: the Urban Network Method and Local Identity Code. He researches and popularises these ideas, presenting the results of his work in public lectures, seminars, workshops, exhibitions, books and magazines. What is more, he likes to put these ideas into practice – he sits down to design whenever his idea interests others and there are chances to implement it.
He spent 12 years working on the go. He lectured and taught design at universities in various parts of the world: in the U.S., at Carnegie Mellon (1991–97) and Michigan (1992), in Mexico, at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (1998), and in Portugal, at the Universidade da Beira Interior (2006–10). He also lectured at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (2010–11), the Warsaw University (1999–2000) and the University of Gdańsk (2016–19). With the support of the Fulbright Programme (1992) and the Kościuszko Foundation (1993) as well as European art programmes: SEAS (2004–10) and CORNERS (2011–13), he researched North American and European cities. He has also worked for cities in Poland and Australia.
All those practices led to several dozen studies, designs and artistic realisations – among others, the complete Local Identity Code of Fremantle, Australia (2009) and the interior design of ŁAŹNIA 2 Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk (2012).
The international audience could see Professor Dominiczak’s installation Delay(er)ing Façade at the 9th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice (2004) and the exhibition Uncovering the City. Architectural Dialogues, which was shown in the U.S., Canada and Denmark (1994). In Poland, he had a solo exhibition DEFORM. The Intimacy of a Dialogical City (Katowice 2015) and academic exhibitions Studies: Gdańsk (SARP Gdańsk 2016) and Toward the Idea of a Dialogical City (WYSPA Art Institute, Gdańsk 2013).
His series of lectures: Dialogical City, Hidden City (PGS, ASP Gdańsk, 1998–99) and Rethinking the City. The Dialogical City and Reality (IKM Gdańsk, 2015–16) met with considerable public interests.
He published the Dialogical City monograph and other dispersed texts (ASP Gdańsk, 2016) as well as a series of five photographic albums Rethinking the City. Gdańsk Perspectives (Fundacja Karrenwall, 2012–2014)
Professor Jacek Dominiczak’s Local Identity Codes won awards from the American Institute of Architects (USA, 1995) and the Polish Chamber of Urban Planners (2009). The interior design of ŁAŹNIA 2 CCA received a mention of honour from the General Conservator of Heritage Monuments in Poland (2013).
In the course of his academic work so far, Professor Jacek Dominiczak has supervised six PhD dissertations and more than forty MA theses. He has given more than seventy academic and public lectures as an invited speaker, including academic inauguration lectures (Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, 1997, 2002) and scientific keynote addresses (Australia ICOMOS National Conference 2006). He presented his ideas at universities and institutions in Poland, Latvia, Croatia, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Portugal, USA, Canada and Australia.
Professor Jacek Dominiczak graduated from the Nicolaus Copernicus General Secondary School no. 1 in Gdańsk (1973) and the Faculty of Architecture of the Gdańsk University of Technology (1978). After years of travel, he again lives and works in Gdańsk’s Główne Miasto.
Join us for author-led tours of the Łaźnia 2 building with Prof. Dominiczak:
Many spaces within ŁAŹNIA 2, typically inaccessible to visitors, will be opened, and the exhibition will extend beyond the exhibition hall itself. In the white rooms of ŁAŹNIA 2, artists, individuals interested in art, architecture, and Gdańsk will have the opportunity to experience a unique encounter between the present and history.