Kordegarda Project

curator: Magda Kardasz
cooperation: Adam Repucha

Bartosz Mucha’s 52 Lazy Weeks. Paraarchitecture at Kordegarda Project crowns a year-long project by the artist/designer/humorous observer of life. Starting from April last year, Mucha created one quasi-architectural design a week. The resulting 52 designs, depicted and described by the artist, have now been published in a book under the same title. 

The idea of improving the quality of life, the individual’s physical comfort and mental hygiene in the present times of chaos and anxiety, is one of the most primary goals of Bartosz Mucha’s conceptual practice. Many of the quasi-architectural objects designed by him as part of the current project are hideaways, where the modern city dweller can hide from the madding crowd, relax, take a nap, gather thoughts, escape the daily grind.

The author plays with the notion of the home, which can be a similar shelter; sometimes, however, it becomes a trap, limiting the freedom of the individual (and especially an artist). It is for a reason that the project-crowning publication’s cover features a picture showing a man trapped inside a house-hamster wheel. By turning it, he is powering a battery that illuminates an optimistic/ironic neon sign: ‘Welcome Home’. Your home and family, Mucha seems to be saying, can offer a sense of security, but they can also become a prison.

Bartosz Mucha is a visionary designer, for whom the existential and social message of his designs is more important than their actual execution in the real world. Many of his quasi-architectural spaces are to serve an ordinary person in need or a tourist as well as a homeless person, permanently lacking a home.  Mucha works with commonly available and low-cost materials, in accordance with the idea of ‘poor design’ propagated by his brand (Poor Design). Many of his designs are humorous variations on existing buildings or structures. Mucha likes to shake the viewer out of their routine thinking on the functions of the given object. The utilitarian often blends with the entertaining in his work, and he loves to build toys for grown-ups.

Humour, irony, playing with meanings are Bartosz Mucha’s favourite artistic strategies. He is also characterised by a penchant for utopian thinking, as he persistently searches for the ideal home, despite being aware that no such ideal is achievable.

Bartosz Mucha about his project:

The term “paraarchitecture” refers to a long term project aimed at creating design concepts, three-dimensional visualizations, scale models, prototypes and ideas, which approach the question of "house" from different perspectives. House is viewed here as shelter, a safe haven, as well as a synonym of security and warmth.

1. Some project designs may be closer to purely architectonic procedures due to their size the visual mode of their perception.
2. They may also be elements of so-called 'small'architecture that establishes an active relationship with a given urban space.
3. Future projects will provide customized solution to the problem of one-night accommodation in strange, unfriendly places.
4. Actions that are entirely conceptual and perverse will also be taken into consideration.
5. Finally there will also be socially-oriented projects directed at homeless people and those who lost their homes as a result of natural disasters.

Bartosz Mucha, born 1978, is a graphic artist, 2D and 3D designer, author of the Poor Design brand. He majored in graphic arts from the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. He has shown his work in solo exhibitions at BB Gallery in Cracow and in Wrocław (2005) and at F.A.I.T. Gallery in Cracow (2006) or BWA Design in Wrocław (2009). He has participated in numerous group shows, such as ŁódźDesign (Łódź, 2007), Vienna Design Week (Vienna, 2008), Designblok (Prague 2009), Real-World laboratory (MQ, Vienna, 2009), Polish Design (Shanghai, 2010). He teaches graphic design in the Faculty of Arts of the Pedagogical University in Cracow. Having completed the five-year project Poor Design, he recently launched a new one, Pararch (for ‘paraarchitecture’), in which he explores alternative architecture. www.poor.pl