Nowicki’s Unbuilt Chandigarh: An Ecology of Everyday Life

This program is offered as part of the Center for Architecture exhibition Humanist modernity: Maciej and Stanisława Nowicki, on view October 1, 2026—March 27, 2027.

Modern architecture gradually separated buildings from their climatic and social contexts. The consequences of this shift can be seen around the world today in architecture that depends on energy-intensive mechanical systems rather than engaging productively with climate through passive design strategies

Maciej Nowicki's plan for Chandigarh, developed with Albert Mayer and left unbuilt after his death in 1950, treated shade, orientation and planting as the framework for daily life rather than as technical corrections to it. Read alongside Stanisława and Maciej Nowicki's wider body of work, it describes a modernism in which the response to climate and the response to community are the same design decision.

Speakers:
Kacper Kępiński, Deputy Director, National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning (NIAiU) in Warsaw
Karolina Częczek, Principal, Only If; Critic, Yale School of Architecture

More speakers to be announced.