Open Call at Neringa Forest Architecture Residency

Applications are open to a broad range of practitioners working on the topic of the forest including architects, designers, carpenters and artists, researchers in the fields of humanities and science interested in cross-disciplinary work and exchange.

Applications are open to participants from the Nordic European region: Åland Islands, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, and Sweden. The residency will be carried out in four time periods: March–May 2022, October–December 2022, January–March 2023, and October–December 2023.

The Neringa Forest Architecture (NFA) project is located at NAC in Nida on the Curonian Spit, a 98km-long sand dune shared by Lithuania and Russia, separating the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site where forests planted over the span of 200 years form an environment dedicated to managing natural eolian processes.

NFA focuses on the features of both the human-made and natural forest: its ecological rhythms, organic and industrial material cycles, timber-based material development, socio-political discourses, history, forestry and policy-making; art, design and architecture.

NFA analyses this cultural landscape as a case study in the context of Baltic and Scandinavian forests by tracing the relationship between ecological, recreational, representational, and industrial narratives, and by presenting the possibility to perceive the forest as an infrastructure formed by a diverse civic consensus. In this residency, the trees of the Curonian forest and all of its distinct eco-socio-political features are literally, and figuratively, the foundational material of the programme.

Living and working conditions

Each resident of the programme is provided with a 65m2 live/work space equipped with basic kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and workspace facilities. Additionally, full access is given to the communal spaces such as the library and the workshops (with weaving looms, ceramic kiln, laser cutting, basic wood and metalworking tools, photo, video and sound equipment).

NFA invites participants to work with naturally seasoned, Neringa-sourced, timber logged over the past two winters. Sturdy, uneven mountain pines, birch, maple, black alder, rubinia, chestnut and other type of trees growing on the spit, cut in planks of various sizes, or in blocks are stored in the NFA timber archive / library ready to be studied and used for the prototyping of furniture, musical instruments, and any other objects by the programme participants at the NAC timber workshop.

The programme can host up to five residents at a time. In addition to the residency programme, NAC organises art and research projects, exhibitions and events. NAC is a subdivision of Vilnius Academy of Arts and hosts students’ seminars and work retreats.  

Each selected resident / collective will receive a monthly grant of 900 EUR and additional travel costs.  

Application requirements

1. Completed application form;
2. Portfolio, sample of work, or publications (selection of 3–5 relevant projects)
3. Current CV (max. two A4 pages);
4. Submit all documents in PDF format, in a single file, in the order listed above using the following title: ‘Full Name_ NFA’.

Application deadline is 9 January 2022, Midnight EET (Helsinki). Visit their website for more information and submit your application and related application questions to: [email protected]