We gather opposite the nesting platform of the common gull. Infrared illuminators warm us on this cold festival evening. The flow of energy, invisible to the naked eye, is revealed by thermal imaging cameras.

Temperature regulates many biological processes occurring in our environment. Individual growth and development, species behaviour, and interspecies interactions are all related to temperature. It also influences the changes occurring in food chains.

Increasing numbers of seagulls in our cities are just one example of the changes taking place in the network of natural connections. The birds nest on rooftops and feed in ports, waste collectors, and landfills. And yet seagulls are migratory birds that move between breeding and wintering grounds due to cyclical changes in weather conditions and food availability. What is the motivation behind migration in a warming climate and a radically transformed urban environment?

Feeling chilled, we gather opposite the nesting platform of the common gull. In the sky above us, the last birds are flying away to wintering grounds. We look at the now-empty platform through holes imitating the seagulls’ field of vision. Will a new pair move here in spring?

Centrala is an architectural studio offering possible scenarios of the future. Architects Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis create their projects based on original reinterpretations of the natural components of modernism. They have popularised Zofia and Oskar Hansens’ house in Szumin (since 2013), the legacy of Jacek Damięcki (since 2014), the Warszawianka sports team designed in the Art and Research Unit of the Academy of Fine Arts (since 2016) as well as the oeuvre of Alina Scholtz (since 2019). Centrala are currently working on the reconstruction of hydrobotany in architecture. They co-authored, among others, the Amplifying Nature exhibition shown at the Polish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale (curated by Anna Ptak).

Natalia Budnik is a landscape architect, graduate of the University of Copenhagen and tutor of the Design by Management course there. Between 2014 and 2019, she was associated with the Copenhagen design office SLA (strategy / urbanity / landscape). Since 2019, she has been running her own landscape architecture studio in Warsaw. She works with architecture and urban planning offices, artists and cultural institutions, creating landscape and plant strategies of various scales. She is interested in projects that underline natural phenomena and processes, creatively adapting the dynamic potential of greenery.

› Learn more about seagulls