Neringa Forest Architecture

Published on Thursday, 04 June 2020 14:20

NAC has developed a new research and residency programme based on spatial and material processes. The material cycle of growing, harvesting, natural drying and processing of timber logged in the forests of the Curonian Spit forms the basis of this programme.
 
As cultural practitioners, we perceive the forest as an active construction site and a material resource – a harvested area that is simultaneously protected, cultivated, simulated, and managed. In the Neringa Forest Architecture programme, the forest as a landscape and material resource, links the local spatial practices of the Curonian Spit with an international discourse and network of design and architecture professionals.  
 
As scholars and architects of the 2019 Neringa Scholarship, Jurga Daubaraitė and Jonas Žukauskas started their project Forest Parts, seeking to open up opportunities for the various institutions operating in the Curonian Spit to collaborate and combine their activities with art, design, and research practices. As a further step in this process, together with NAC director Egija Inzule they initiated this programme to take place in 2020–2022 that sees the Curonian Spit’s forests as a case study to conjoin to the deeper analysis in the wider context of infrastructure of forests in the Baltic-Scandinavian region: their natural growth and change, policy making, forestry management processes, timber technology, and design innovations. The programme assembles local and international experts, scholars, designers, architects, artists as well as students and faculty of Vilnius Academy of Arts to initiate design propositions. 
 
Neringa Forest Architecture started with cutting a pile of wood into planks, specifically, 25m3 of logs, felled in the Curonian Spit forests during the last logging season (November 2019 – February 2020) and acquired by NAC from Kretinga Forestry, the institution in charge of logging in the spit. From March through May 2020, these logs were stored in the front yard of the NAC. In May, a mobile sawmill cut them into planks of various sizes and thicknesses. In June, the NAC front yard was partly used as a public workshop where architects developed a wooden storage structure that will enable the timber to be stored and naturally seasoned on site.
 
Architecture: Jonas Žukauskas and Jurga Daubaraitė
Concept and coordination: Jurga Daubaraitė, Egija Inzule, Jonas Žukauskas
Construction of the shed: Jonas Žukauskas and Jurgis Paškevičius
Construction works were supported by Nerijus Rimkus, Robertas Narkus, Rudolfas Levulis, Denisas Kolomyckis, NAC team, Aleksxandras Tereščenko, Eugenij Veres
  
 
Neringa Forest Architecture is co-funded by NERINGA Lithuanian Capital of Culture 2021, Lithuanian Council for Culture and Nordic Culture Point.

Photos by Julija Navarskaitė.

Photos by Jonas Žukauskas.