Intended to reveal a history of women architects in Warsaw, the exhibition ARCHITEKTJI at ZODIAK Warszawski Pawilon Architektury (18.7.25 – 19.10.25) deploys an elegant curatorial structure to reveal the breadth of this history in parallel with five more intimate thematic and biographical stories. The exhibition is arranged in two parts. Within the loggia-like ground floor space of the pavilion, exposed to the centre of contemporary Warsaw, are the intertwined stories of five groups of architects. Each group was initiated by a mid-career ‘mentor’ who in turn chose two partners, a significant influence from the older generation and a young architect, often a recent student or collaborator. We were shown around the exhibition by Gosia Kuciewicz, one of the mentors. Her intellectual guides were the Group Vistula, five women who formed a working group within the city’s architecture department shortly after graduating from architecture school in the 1950s. The group spent more than two decades studying and developing projects around Warsaw’s River eco-system, some of which were executed and others that have once again become part of developing plans for the city. Alongside this archival work was contemporary work around the themes of water and the river, by both Gosia and by her chosen protege Basia Sancewicz. This constellation of architects and their work is repeated four more times, and because of differences in interests, scales and careers, the selection does a good job describing the diverse interests and achievements of polish architecture in the 20th and 21st centuries.

These specific stories are complemented by The Atlas of Warsaw Women Architects, a timeline that traces the careers and work of 41 female architects born before 1939, providing the cultural and human foundations for the stories told on the ground floor. The exhibition as a whole is modest in scale but successfully brings to light a vital and important story of women in polish architecture.