Jonas Žukauskas Archives - Neringa Forest Architecture

Forest Atlas

Neringa Forest Architecture — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 07:41:47 +0000

Every way of seeing Lithuania’s green garment is shaped by its own optics – filtered through the observer’s interests and conditioned by an entire sequence of instruments and methodologies. ‘Forest Atlas’ is a process-based exhibition that invites visitors to enter the density of the forest at its centre – without beginning or end – into a constellation of prints assembled by aligning a diversity of forest images. The pictures, photographs, diagrams and maps presented in ‘Forest Atlas’ cartograph publicly available spatial data, revealing territorial changes, tracing the preparation and circulation of timber, and mapping the networks of production and technological innovation within the timber industry.

The notion of sustainability – now deeply embedded in cultural language to describe both products and the renewable resources used to produce them – arose historically from operations carried out in forest spaces. It is linked to the efficient cyclicality of felling and planting, and to the exploitation of forest territories designed to produce predictable, renewable timber stocks. Methods and tools developed to measure trees and compute their volume gradually reshaped our perception of forest habitats: to harvest timber more efficiently, forests were schematised, simplified, and reduced to numerical tables. Wetlands were drained, tree density thinned, creating the most favourable conditions for the strongest, straightest trees. In the process, the ability to see the forest as a long-formed, impenetrable, biodiversity-rich space was eroded. Today, this vision is being reconstructed – driven by ecological concern and a growing cultural shift that calls for the expanded protection of forest areas and the preservation of diverse ecosystems to support adaptation to climate heating.

The forest is a place of tension – shaped by competing interests, seen through culturally conditioned lenses. ‘Forest Atlas’ is dedicated to sensing forms of knowledge and imagination that link diverse disciplines, opening a fragmented overview of the relationships at work in forest futurity.

‘Forest Atlas’ opened on Saturday, 14 June,At the same time, in another forest and another cultural institution – Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts – the ‘Neringa Wood Works’ began, led by the resident carpenters’ collective gemeinsam bauen wir neu, the accompanying exhibition features work created by participants in the Neringa Forest Architecture project since 2020.

Exhibition dates: June 14 – July 13, 2025.

Visiting hours: Saturdays and Sundays, 12:00–17:00, or by prior appointment at tel. 061416255.

Address: Marcinkonys Station Gallery, Kastinio g. 1C, Marcinkonys.

‘Forest Atlas’ is a Neringa Forest Architecture project. Maps, research and visuals: Jurga Daubaraitė & Jonas Žukauskas, cartography and research assistant: Augusta Fišerytė.

Title image: Rūdninkų forest, spectral analysis from the years 2015, 2022, and 2025, is an assembly of publicly available Landsat 8 remote sensing data (Band 6, designed to detect hard surfaces). Areas that opened up following forest clear-cutting are seen in blue. Jurga Daubaraitė, Jonas Žukauskas, 2025

Financed by: Lithuanian Council for Culture and Varėna region municipality

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Book – Jonas Prapuolenis STUDIJA

Neringa Forest Architecture — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:41:12 +0000

This publication serves as a photographic document and proposal to preserve Jonas Prapuolenis’ (1900–1980) hand-built Studio in which he designed and produced most of his work over a remarkable and inventive career. The Studio sits on a nearly century-old site in the Žaliakalnis neighbourhood of Kaunas alongside Prapuolenis’ home and surrounding garden, which continue to be cared for by his son, Bangutis Prapuolenis.

Jonas Prapuolenis was a designer, artist, and educator who interpreted the textures and qualities of local timber, and its particular, unique structures and patterns shaped by the local climate and terrain and translated its geometries into artistic furniture pieces.

Photographs by Rasa Juškevičiūtė capture fragments of the studio building enveloped by a fruit tree garden, and document and reveal evidence of Jonas Prapuolenis’ practice and knowledge – design and craft processes that can be read through singular pieces of furniture stored inside the crumbling wooden structure of the workshop; his material storage and showroom filled with seasoned raw, rough timber pieces; unfinished design components; sketches on paper; bone and amber ornaments; and fine particles of dust accumulated through time.

Alongside the photographs, an inserted notebook holds contributions written by Kotryna Lingienė and Aistė Dičkalnytė, which study the history of the Studio and offer a wider perspective of Prapuolenis’ life and intentions. Their words unravel layers of slow time and the singular way Prapuolenis worked with materials while reflecting on folkloristic themes and modernist design, the meaning of such heritage and the importance of preserving the Studio.

Jonas Prapuolenis’ homestead, his family home (built in 1925) and the Studio (built in 1936) have been included in the Immovable Property Heritage Register of the Republic of Lithuania since 2011, however, significant wear of the structural elements, roofing and cladding of the Studio require further material protection and measures of conservation to preserve this heritage as a specific inseparable whole.

Photography: Rasa Juškevičiūtė
Design: Goda Budvytytė
Editors: Jurga Daubaraitė, Jonas Žukauskas
Texts: Aistė Dičkalnytė, Kotryna Lingienė, Jurga Daubaraitė and Jonas Žukauskas
Photography assistant: Marija Olšauskaitė
Colour grading: Danielius Samulevič

Lithuanian language copy-editor and English translator: Alexandra Bondarev;
Lithuanian language copy-editor for foreword: Aira Niauronytė
English language copy-editor: Gemma Lloyd

Published by: Kirvarpa
Printed by: Kopa
Edition: 500

Financed by Lithuanian Council for Culture

ISBN 978-609-96209-9-2

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TIMBER SEASONING SHED

Neringa Forest Architecture — Sat, 03 Aug 2024 10:15:44 +0000

at Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Nida, Lithuania

The Neringa Forest Architecture started by diverting timber extracted in the Curonian Spit forest initially designated for biofuel and built a Natural Timber Seasoning Shed at the Nida Art Colony (NAC) of Vilnius Academy of Arts in Nida in 2020, it serves as an archive, documenting timber samples, a resource storage and public display of forest histories and planning.

This local timber resource became the basis of an artistic research residency program at NAC that involves architects, artists, researchers, and journalists. The assembly promotes a wider understanding of the forest environment, by tracing its extractivist industrial practices and processes and their impact on biodiversity. Engagement is seeking wider public awareness and agency to influence decisions in contemporary forest.

Architecture: Jonas Žukauskas and Jurga Daubaraitė
Concept and coordination: Jurga Daubaraitė, Egija Inzule, Jonas Žukauskas
Construction works: Jonas Žukauskas and Jurgis Paškevičius
with kind help by: Nerijus Rimkus, Robertas Narkus, Rudolfas Levulis, Denisas Kolomyckis, NAC team, Aleksandras Tereščenko, Eugenij Veres

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mindaugas — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 08:13:02 +0000

Children’s Forest Pavilion
Lithuania at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition –
La Biennale di Venezia 2023

18 May – 26 November 2023

2125 Campo Tana, Castello, Venice
(opposite the entrance to the Arsenale)

The Children’s Forest Pavilion is composed as a playscape and conceived to acknowledge the unique approaches of children to observe, draw conclusions, explain the forest, and demand agency in forming it. This project brings together works and findings developed in parallel to outdoor activities held with children in woodlands in Lithuania and Finland. Guided by environmental educators, activists, artists, architects, and foresters, they were introduced to think of forests as negotiated spaces where no single actor has a central stake.

Located directly opposite the entrance to the Arsenale, the pavilion’s installation is both an architectural object and a conceptual structure, meandering through a Venetian patio house, and allowing different formats of discussion, interaction and play. It is made out of timber from trees on the Curonian Spit that have, over several years, been collected in an archive at Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts as part of the project Neringa Forest Architecture. Combined with film installations, worktables and play structures, the architectural elements in the pavilion support the research and learning environment of the exhibition, which shows how the children that participated learned about ancient forests, primordial swamp landscapes and long processes of geological formations.

Through the outdoor activities, the children explored the forest at various levels of scale and perception, looking at the growth patterns of lichens, investigating chemical pollution molecules through augmented reality, and discovering sounds from reverberations of ancient and living timber, among other things. The exhibition includes an alphabet made of the branches of hundred-year-old mountain pines, a space with supersized shadows, as well as computer-generated spores and slime moulds in a myriad of shapes and forms, and invites visitors to play and learn about forests, as architectural and infrastructural spaces: environments of natural systems governed, exploited, and regulated by human interventions, technologies, industries, institutions and agencies, but also places of depleting biodiversity.

The Children’s Forest Pavilion is conceived as an educational tool with the potential to ‘branch off’ and connect to other spatial and thematic elements. At the end of the Biennale Architettura 2023, it will return to the woodlands of the Curonian Spit where it will function as a destination for forest walks and environmental education workshops. The pavilion is organised by the Neringa Forest Architecture project that was initiated in 2020 to reflect on the agency of cultural practices and institutions in framing environmental relationships. The project has its starting point in Nida Art Colony, a subdivision of Vilnius Academy of Arts, located in the Lithuanian part of the Curonian Spit. As a continuous programme, Neringa Forest Architecture involves a growing assembly of collaborations and participants to read the cultural landscape of the area from multiple perspectives and practices as a case study in the context of the forests of the region.

Opening: 18 May at 3pm

Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday
19 May – 30 September: 11am – 7pm
1 October – 26 November: 10am – 6pm
Closed on Mondays (except 22 May, 14 August, 4 September, 16 October, 30 October, 11 November)
Admission to the pavilion is free of charge.

Contributors: Aistė Ambrazevičiūtė, Ancient Woods Foundation, Gabrielė Grigorjevaitė, Laura Garbštienė, Mustarinda Association (Tiina Arjukka Hirvonen, Michaela Casková, Robin Everett, Riitta (Nyyskä) Nykänen), Mantas Peteraitis, School of Creativity (Kristupas Sabolius), New Academy (Ikko Alaska, Nene Tsuboi, Tuomas Toivonen), Urbonas Studio (Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas), Kornelija Žalpytė

Curators: Jurga Daubaraitė, Egija Inzule, Jonas Žukauskas
Commissioner: Ines Weizman
Architecture: Jonas Žukauskas in collaboration with Antanas Gerlikas, Jurgis Paškevičius, Anton Shramkov

Graphic design: Monika Janulevičiūtė
Poster illustration: Izadora Daubaraitė Žukauskaitė
Moss hats and shalws: Banan Vedro, Circulation of Infernation, Doch, Heorhii Hohatadze
Video production: Eitvydas Doškus, Elis Hannikainen
Video editing: Ignė Narbutaitė
Lighting: Martynas Kazimierėnas
Photo documentation: Rasa Juškevičiūtė
Coordination: Dovilė Lapinskaitė

Coordination in Venice: Marco Scurati
Communication: Stefanija Jokštytė, Anna Luise Schubert, Alexandra Bondarev
Translation and proofreading: Alexandra Bondarev, Gemma Lloyd
Project assistant: Vilius Vaitiekūnas
Pavilion attendants: Rugilė Akambakaitė, Magdalena Beliavska, Augusta Fišerytė, Aistė Gaidilionytė, Rimantas Giedra, Gustė Kripaitė, Marta Dorotėja Lekavičiūtė, Gabija Naikauskaitė, Viktorija Narbutaitė, Kamilė Vasiliauskaitė, Gabrielė Vrublevska
Accounting: Rasa Bliakevič
Legal consulting: Neringa Savickė, Kotryna Volodkaitė

Organised by: Neringa Forest Architecture
Implemented by: Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts
Partner: Centre for Documentary Architecture
Supported by: Neringa Municipality, Nordic Culture Point, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Baltic Culture Fund

Thanks to: Artnews.lt, Gražina Banienė, Adriano Berengo, Yulia Derenko, Gaetano di Gregorio, Aurora Fonda, Laura Gabrielaitytė-Kazulėnienė, Pranas Gudaitis, Monika Kalinauskaitė, Dr. Mindaugas Lapelė, Laguna nel Bicchiere – Le Vigne Ritrovate, Marija Olšauskaitė, Rimantė Paulauskaitė-Digaitienė and Dr. Ainis Pivoras from the Ancient Woods Foundation, Viktorija Rybakova, Mindaugas Survila, Nida Forestry, Kretinga Forestry, the Curonian Spit National Park

Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts: Milena Černiakaitė, Vasilisa Filatova, Alberta Globienė, Giedrius Globys, Asta Jackutė, Dalia Jokūbauskaitė, Lina Košeleva, Aldona Lankauskienė, Elena Orlovienė, Daura Polonskytė, Ieva Skauronė, Yana Ustymenko, Katerina Vaseko, Tetjana Volosiuk

All the children, educators, and schools who participated in workshops in Lithuania and Finland
Puolankajärvi Comprehensive School (Puolanka, FI), Hyrynsalmi Comprehensive School (Hyrynsalmi, FI), Neringa Gymnasium (Nida, LT), Young Forest Friends (Kretinga, LT), Baltupiai Progymnasium (Vilnius, LT), Gerosios Vilties Progymnasium (Vilnius, LT), Emilijos Pliaterytės Progymnasium (Vilnius, LT), Pavilnys Progymnasium (Vilnius, LT), Sietuva Progymnasium (Vilnius, LT), Simonas Konarskis Gymnasium (Vilnius, LT), Simonas Stanevičius Progymnasium (Vilnius, LT), Vasily Kachalov Gymnasium (Vilnius, LT), Vilnius Sofya Kovalevskaya Progymnasium (Vilnius, LT)

Press contact:
International: Anna Luise Schubert, press@neringaforestarchitecture.lt
Lithuania: Stefanija Jokštytė, press@nidacolony.lt

Link to press pack.

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