Forest is infrastructure : the work of Neringa Forest Architecture

BIOGRAPHIE:

Jonas Žukauskas is an architect, researcher, and curator based in Vilnius. He is one of the founders of the Neringa Forest Architecture (NFA) collective, Kirvarpa Books, and the Talka talka architecture practice. Since 2014, Jonas has worked with Jurga Daubaraitė as a duo to research the histories and materialities of colonisations and modernisations—processes through which the built environment, infrastructures, and extraction networks were deployed to shape the geographies and culture of the Baltic States, now an integral part of the European project. Together they research, propose spatial concepts, and create architectural projects.
Jonas co-curated the following exhibitions : The Baltic Material Assemblies at AA gallery and RIBA (2018); Les Pièces de la Forêt, an exhibition at arc en rêve centre d’architecture (2024); the Children’s Forest Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2023); and the Baltic Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2016), among other projects. He was also co-editor of The Baltic Atlas, published by Sternberg Press (2016). Since 2022, as part of the Neringa Forest Architecture collective, Jonas has been a COOP tutor at The Dutch Art Institute (DAI) MFA program.

https://neringaforestarchitecture.lt/

PRÉSENTATION:

Neringa Forest Architecture (NFA) (Jurga Daubaraitė, Egija Inzule, and Jonas Žukauskas) is an art, architecture, and research collective broadly interested in exploring the agency of infrastructure, mineral and biological resources, material flows, and natural systems, focusing on how these intersect to shape geographies and societies. Viewing forest environments as spaces of negotiation where many project their concerns and interests, NFA investigates how forests operate as complex infrastructures shaped by human interventions, material flows, and ecological cycles. The collective approaches its projects by responding to broader narratives of infrastructure and material flows with work that delves into the intricate relationships and causalities that define how environments are shaped and transformed.
NFA is dedicated to revealing these processes and entanglements to a wider public. The talk will explore projects by Neringa Forest Architecture, starting from its early work at Nida Art
Colony in Nida, Lithuania, on the coast of the Baltic Sea. The project began in 2019 by redirecting timber cut in the forests of the Curonian Spit—a cultural landscape of afforested sand dunes—from biofuel processing in order to construct the Natural Timber Seasoning Shed, which became both a material storage facility and a document of the forces and processes forming the forest landscape. Based on this resource, NFA initiated an artistic research residency program that invited artists, architects, and researchers to reflect on the forest.
From the timber documented and collected over three years, NFA built and curated the Children’s Forest Pavilion as the Lithuanian contribution to the International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2023. This educational playscape installation brought together works and findings developed in parallel with outdoor activities held with children in woodlands in Lithuania and Finland.
In 2024, NFA collaborated with arc en rêve centre d’architecture in Bordeaux, within the framework of Season of Lithuania in France, to create Les pièces de la forêt. This exhibition, conceived as a playscape made of wood samples collected from private monoculture plantations, experimental forests, and private and statemanaged mixed forests, features materials from industrial timber production processes that provide tactile links to the stories, processes, and practices that have shaped— and continue to shape—the Landes de Gascogne forests. The exhibition will be open until 25 May 2025.