Zofia Hansen in Szumin
by
23 January, 2025
Since 2013, CENTRALA (Gosia Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis) have been custodians of the architecture of a living monument—Oskar and Zofia Hansen’s house in Szumin, which is under the care of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and open to the public. This summer house belonged to these important Polish architects, and is a spatial manifesto of their theory of Open Form.
In 2014, one year after CENTRALA had completed a survey of the Szumin house, they co-coreographed a performance piece on Zofia Hansen together with performers fromCentrum w Ruchu in a theatre called TR Warszawa. During CENTRALA’s custodianship, deep research and reflection on the material and spatial qualities and lived experience of the house has made apparent the hidden but profound influence of Zofia Garlińska-Hansen (1924-2013) on its character and reality. Following a familiar path in history, it is Oskar who took the public-facing role in their partnership, as a prolific teacher, writer and thinker.
The privileged access to the Szumin House and the Hansen archive enjoyed by CENTRALA and their colleague in many projects, Aleksandra Kedziorek, has enabled Zofia’s role to emerge, and this ongoing collection seeks to introduce writing by women about her, directly and in relation to her husband, to Women Writing Architecture.