September 11, 2026, marks exactly 25 years since the attack on the World Trade Center. How does this anniversary relate to the exhibition "Jerzy Fedorowicz and Ludmiła Popiel. Beyond the Picture"?

In the spring of 2003, an international competition for a design commemorating the victims of the attacks – the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition – was announced. It was one of the largest architectural competitions in history: organizers received 5,201 designs from 63 countries.

Jerzy Fedorowicz also prepared his proposal.

The final version of the design submitted for the competition has not survived in the Foundation's archives. However, a preparatory sketch has survived and was first publicly displayed at the exhibition Beyond the Picture. It can be seen in the final section of the exhibition, on the mezzanine of the Koszalin Museum.

This is a small trace of a much larger intention, but also a testament to the fact that Fedorowicz's interest in space, memory, and the meaning of place did not end with the era of conceptualism in the 1960s and 1970s.

But why do we start the ZOOM series with a project located almost at the very end of the exhibition?

And what is chronology when emotions and memory are involved?

Thus began the 24-week countdown to the exhibition's conclusion. ZOOM wasn't intended to be a guide from the first exhibit to the last. Each episode focuses on a single work, document, idea, or story, sometimes following the chronology of the work, and sometimes—as in this case—a date, association, and memory.

Bibliography and sources

Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition, 2003 – competition documentation and information on 5,201 entries from 63 countries.

Archive of the Jerzy Fedorowicz and Ludmiła Popiel "Osieki" Foundation – Jerzy Fedorowicz's sketch for the project prepared for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition, 2003.

Museum in Koszalin / Osieki Foundation, exhibition materials: Jerzy Fedorowicz and Ludmiła Popiel. Beyond the Image, 2026.