Jacek Markusiewicz
Architect, creative coder.
Jacek Markusiewicz (mrkswcz) is an architect and creative coder from Poland with over 15 years of professional and academic experience. He holds a PhD in architecture and urban planning from the Warsaw University of Technology. He specialises in parametric design, generative modelling, programming, machine learning, and responsive design.
He worked on different architecture and urban planning projects using a parametric approach in offices in Barcelona, Beirut, Warsaw and San Sebastian. As an assistant professor at the Department of Computer-aided Design at the Warsaw University of Technology, he researched human-computer interaction in architectural design processes (augmented reality, haptic interfaces and adaptive design, among others).
During that time, he worked on multiple interactive installations. Among these were 'Modular Light Cloud' – an interactive installation that formed the stage design for a contemporary dance performance by Liwia Bargieł in Warsaw, and 'Monadologia' – a light installation that was part of Aleksandra Hirszfeld's art project at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw (both with Marcin Strzała, Warsaw University of Technology). As part of the company RAZ (co-founded with Ander Gortazar Balerdi), Jacek was a lead designer of Polish Table – the central interactive installation for the Polish pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai. Other installations include 'Aurora boreal', 'Abbott' and 'Tesseract' – temporary interactive light installations in San Sebastian.
Since 2021, Jacek has been applying his programming knowledge to the artistic field. His work merges architectural and natural inspirations with forms created by mathematical and algorithmic logic.
Exploring such underlying rules is especially visible in Jacek's early artistic works, particularly 'unbuilt' and 'reborn.' The first is a collection of 256 plans of fictional buildings inspired by the grammatical rules behind French sacral architecture of the Middle Ages. The latter is an album of 256 algorithmically generated plans of ideal cities that resemble drawings of Vincenzo Scamozzi, Pietro Cataneo, Filarete and other theorists of the Italian Renaissance.
In recent years, Jacek has published a series of works reflecting on the dichotomy between nature and human intervention and whether such a distinction exists: 'hollow', which reflects on the use of natural formations as material for artistic expression; 'cantera', which delves into shaping the natural landscape for utilitarian purposes; and 'barbarians', which examines different dichotomies through which we see the world.
Other works, such as 'de|growth: generations' and '7.356 degrees', explore shaping digital matter through algorithmic rules that drive the formation of abstract three-dimensional structures.
He has published works on fx(hash) and Teia. His collaborations extend to platforms and galleries such as Verse, Tender, and BrightMoments. Two of his pieces (Cantera no. 7 and Finale no. 988) were auctioned at Christie's as part of the complete Bright Moments collection.
