The Recliner is an installation that helps people to lie down and relax. Its frame is now on display on the lawn in front of Wroclaw's Architecture Museum. Visitors will be able to test it out on Friday 11 July from 6 pm.
The Recliner was designed by the architect Mikołaj Smoleński in collaboration with Grzegorz Kaczmarowski.The installation addresses the problem of urban architecture where there are no benches to recline and wind down. We spend one-third of the day sleeping, the horizontal position is also the best one to think and relax. However, people find it embarrassing to recline in the city. This is because we may easily be associated either with homeless people who often lie in the streets or with the amateurs of psychoactive substances or urban vagrants of various sorts. Hence the idea to create the Recliner. It was designed to provide its users with the opportunity to lie down and relax. The work resembles a stand which, instead of chairs, was fitted with special places to recline.
Mikołaj Smoleński graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (2002) and the Unversity of Art and Design in Helsinki. He runs his own design platform SOFFT, collaborates with Wroclaw-based architecture studios and teaches at the Faculty of Ceramics at Wroclaw's Academy of Fine Arts. He is also involved in the activities that combine art and architecture and are mainly concerned with public space. He contributed to the design of the "Agora" Cultural Centre in Wroclaw and the Regional Centre for Sports and Recreation in Kołobrzeg. He has been awarded with a number of prizes and distinctions at a number of nationwide architecture competitions.
Archi-box
The Archi-box cycle has been conceived as a series of events to present the latest phenomena in contemporary architecture, organised as part of the new programme of the Architecture Museum in Wroclaw. In 2013, four events were organised as part of the series. Architects from Poland (Maciej Siuda and Jednorazowe Laboratorium Architektury, KameleonLab, +48 Grupa Projektowa, MRKK | design studio) and Italy (AION Studio) were invited to take part in the initiative. Each event in the series offers free workshops and an exhibition. The work of the architects invited to take part in each event is also summarised by a separate book. Michał Duda works as the curator of the series.
The Recliner will be available to the public until 31 August. The work will be officially unveiled on Friday 11 July at 6 pm. The event will be accompanied by a concert: at 9 pm Maciek Bączyk (Robotobibok / Małe Instrumenty) will present his new project _N_A__G___R____A_____. Admission is free.
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