duration: 19 minutes concept & script: Lesia Topolnyk direction: Lesia Topolnyk & Dorothée Meddens direction of photography: Lesia Topolnyk & Dorothée Meddens camera & editing: Dorothée Meddens voiceovers: Alec Page & Lesia Topolnyk soundscapes: Kenny Dean Kneefel soundmix: Frank Weyzig produced with the support of Mondriaan Fund and Creative Industries Fund
Stills from the film ‘No Innocent Landscape’: The film unravels the story of traumas and issues on different scales and beyond humans, from the MH17 victims loss of human life extending to environmental degradation. It presents a personal struggle navigating through a mixed-up world of perpetual instability parallel to larger global issues, from the dream of an individual up to our world order.
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Project
Biography
Lesia Topolnyk (StudioSpaceStation) is an architect, artist, researcher, and film director based in The Netherlands and working internationally. Raised within a constantly changing political environment in her native Ukraine and educated as an artist and architect, at the heart of her practice lies a fascination with the interconnectedness of global dynamics and invisible forces that manifest and shape our physical realities.
After a decade of working for internationally renowned architecture practices, Lesia founded Studio Space Station to respond to urgent societal and planetary issues beyond traditional boundaries of architecture, bringing together global and local concerns.
Through mediums of installations, interventions, architectural designs, drawings, films, and sculptures, Lesia makes ideas, dreams, and hidden stories tangible. Grounded in extensive research, each project unfolds as a unique expression of its context. Lesia’s work seeks to provoke thought, evoke emotion, and spark dialogue, inviting engagement with the complexities of our world in new and unexpected ways.
Lesia easily navigates between different scales and realities, holding masters in Architecture (NL), Urban Planning (PL), and Environmental design (UA). For her work, Lesia has received numerous Dutch and international awards, being exhibited and published internationally. Lesia teaches and gives lectures in The Netherlands and abroad.
2024 - International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) 2024 - OMI, Rotterdam 2022 - Prix de Rome, NI, Rotterdam 2022 - Architecture Triennale, Lisbon 2022 - New European Bauhaus, Brussels 2021 - Dutch Design Week 2021 - Biennale, Venice 2020 - Dutch Design Week 2019 - Biennale, Santiago 2019 - Archiprix International 2019 - Archiprix Netherlands
Portrait Prix de Rome 2022
'Lesia Topolnyk is an architect who focuses on a broader interpretation of her field. She is interested in the potential of her profession within our constructed reality – not necessarily in building things. 'It's about ideas that take shape during the research and design process which generate new typologies,' she says. For her, it's not enough to shape the world reactively, or in line with what already exists. She explains: 'Although architects are seen as people who design spaces, we also design relationships. Especially in these turbulent political times, it's necessary to look at how the world is designed to understand the larger context in which a project is taking place. I sometimes reflect on major problems at a global level, while other times I focus on the space inside someone's mind.'
Topolnyk grew up in Ukraine, and addressed the situation in Crimea with her final project at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. She created a proposal for a building that consisted primarily of corridors – places where discussions and interactions occur that ultimately have the greatest influence on the decisions being made. Continuous mediation of the situation was central to this concept. The architecture symbolised and supported the mental capacity of those involved. In this endless network of hallways, which reference the agora, visitors could have endless discussions which allowed for a continuous debate; politics is an ongoing conversation. Similarly, her own vision of architecture and her process of research and design focuses on conversation, contributions from different positions, and the involvement of people with a wide range of expertise. She therefore frequently collaborates with people who work in different fields. Because 'you can learn from others and they bring valuable insights and viewpoints...'
Her current research is focused on the various crises humanity is currently facing, with a special interest in political systems and the significance of democracy, including its Greek foundations. She is exploring how this form of government was historically designed and how architecture supported and portrayed it. 'It's about how we can shape change and how we can manage the world better together,' she concludes. Architecture can play a role in that by offering design solutions that support the decision-making process.'
