The exhibition tells the story of a housing estate in Ciechanów, designed and built by the Third Reich during the World War II. We can find similar housing estates, with their characteristic architecture, in many cities in Poland. We refer to them as ‘post-German’ or ‘Berlinek’.

The district in Ciechanów, designed as a Gartenvorstadt (garden-suburb), over time became known as the ‘Blocks’. It was created in the early 1940s. It was intended as a new housing base for officials and their families settling in the capital of the newly founded East Prussian district. The original name evokes associations with Ebenezer Howard’s utopian concept of the garden city. Huge tracts of land were built up so that the spaces between the buildings could be filled with green. Today, the estate is still bathed in greenery, despite later housing densification.

- This is the story of a housing estate in my hometown. About a troubled heritage, and, above all, about the local vegetation and its political entanglement in shaping the landscape of the conquered lands. About the history of the garden suburb from the perspective of nature, the introduction of the ‘German order’ and what escapes attempts at colonisation - Barbara Nawrocka, curator of the exhibition.

• Organisers: Museum of Architecture in Wrocław and Pilecki-Institut Berlin
• Exhibition concept and design: Barbara Nawrocka
• Design of the exhibition: Barbara Nawrocka
• Visual key: Renia Maj, Traffic Design
• Production: Misia Siennicka i Agnieszka Smutek
• PR & Communication: Iga Bałchanowska, Marta Czyż, Kalina Soska