Agata Szydłowska

Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw | ASP WAW · Faculty of Design

The development of a post-Stalinist modern kitchen in Poland was informed by the activities of different individual and institutional actors: experts in ‘professional’ home engineering, architects and designers and modernist taste-makers. The image of the model kitchen is surprisingly coherent: a rational laboratory kitchen, where the housewife’s w...

In 1918 when Poland recouped its independence, a creation of national styles in art and design started to be an important political issue for a newly created nation state. A special consideration was given to inventing a national typeface. After numerous discussions between designers, artists, publishers and typographers, a complete “Polish typefac...

The essay traces the history of European kitchen design in the context of emancipation and its different subjects: servants, women and kitchen space itself.

The paper provides an introductory discussion and a curatorial case study on design practice that contributes to a constitution of a human and non-human community as well as challenges and expands the notion of care to other species. It starts with an examination of existing approaches to design that take into consideration relations between humans...

The book is an investigation into "lifestyle" magazines of the first three decades of Post-war Poland. The analysed magazines are: "Przekrój", "Ty i Ja", "Kobieta i Życie", "Przyjaciółka". The book analyses their political entanglement, social impact as well as their design and the way they mediated between taste-makers and readers.

MYCOsystem focuses on the relations between fungi, trees, and man. This is a study of just one material – wood – as seen from the vantage point of a variety of species. For us, timber is a construction material; while fungi may understand wood as food; to another representative of the kingdom, wood is the flesh of a living plant, offering co-operat...

The chapter examines history of Design Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw seen from the perspective of graphic design and visual communication education. The history presented is rooted in the political and economical context of 1980s in Poland and the advent of capitalist economy.

The chapter traces changes of taste in Polish society in relation to interior furnishings from late 1980s to the second decade of 21st century and interprets the changes referring to the change of the attitude towards mid-century "socialist" modernism and its promise of welfare and equality.

Being tied to industrialization, which has led to global warming, design has a hand in transforming the Earth. No change in the human relationship with the environment can occur without the involvement of designers. There are many environmentally responsible design strategies. One involves using other species for producing objects. Solutions like t...

The book titled "From solidaryca to TypoPolo..." is an analysis of the role of different forms of letters in contemporary Polish society. It consists of three main parts, each of them devoted to different problems within typography and their different cultural contexts. The argument presented in this book is that letters in their material dimension...

The article provides an introductory discussion on design practice that contributes to a possible constitution of an expanded community composed of humans, non-human animals and other species. It starts with an examination of existing approaches to design and art that take into consideration relationships between humans and non-humans. We divide th...

The text analyses professional reception of a phenomenon called TypoPolo. Being a part of vernacular typography, the term defines a particular kind of urban lette- ring and signage found in Polish towns, which can become a subject of criticism, as well as a source of fascination for professional designers. Referring to sociological analyses of the...

This exploratory paper provides an account on the big Polish cities that have recently undertaken major problems of so called revitalization. According to New Urbanism ideas, these projects should involve participation of inhabitants and address needs of different actors which dwell in the cities. We introduce two cases of Warsaw and Poznań where t...

The book examines history of Polish type design in a broad cultural and political context.

The original logotype of Independent Self- Governing Trade Union “Solidarity” was designed by Jerzy Janiszewski when the strike in the Gdańsk Shipyard broke out in August 1980. It spread quickly throughout Poland and began its afterlife in countless interpretations and travesties created spontaneously by multiple “Solidarity” members and supporters...