photo. Ula Zajączkowska

Trafostation is an attempt to re-naturalize the ecosystem at Niskie Łąki in Wrocław, Poland.
A defunct transformer station building from 1930 became a scaffold for a living sculpture initiated by running a biological ‘machine’ of vegetation.

The modernist architecture is covered by various species of plant, and water flows from three windows, recalling the 1997 flood that devastated Wrocław. Direct human intervention for this small habitat involved planting ferns, ivy, geraniums, mosses, euonymus and seeding ruderal plants. Trafostation is created for a future when non-human organisms will take possession of the building completely and turn it into a new habitat.

Water and plants are understood as agents and the driving force of the project, hence the form and future of the project is up to them. The vegetation cycle will be a spectacle of non-human forces playing out on a stage created by architecture. And, although the performance is intended for humans, the actors of Trafostation
are the organisms resident in the ecosystem. Trafostation is therefore a gesture of offering the human phenomena of architecture to other species.

Photo: Ula Zajączkowska