The Nomadic Shtetl Archive. Mobile Interventions in Post-Jewish Architecture

Source: Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies

BOOK LAUNCH
Natalia Romik

The Nomadic Shtetl Archive. Mobile Interventions in Post-Jewish Architecture

Thursday February 12, 2026, 6 pm

UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, 22 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0QB, Rm. 6.02. No registration required.

We warmly invite you to a public book launch of Architecture of Memory (UCL Press, 2025) by Natalia Romik. The event is open to all and forms part of the Situating Architecture Lecture Series at the Bartlett School of Architecture, co-hosted by the Department of Jewish and Hebrew Studies and the Institute for Polish–Jewish Studies.

Architecture of Memory explores architectural disappearance, urban remembrance and functional change amid social upheaval. Using archival, architectural and artistic methods, Natalia Romik investigates the spectral architecture of former shtetls – predominantly Jewish towns in Central and Eastern Europe before the Second World War. After the war, these towns were repopulated by people of other nationalities, who reused former Jewish properties. Today, traces of the Jewish populations have nearly vanished from urban reality and public discourse. Romik’s work seeks to discover new ways to develop abandoned shtetl architecture, focusing on Jewish heritage sites like synagogue ruins and ritual baths. In her talk, Natalia Romik will also reflect on the artistic performances and architectural interventions which inform her research which confront the ‘present absence’ of former Jewish shtetls.

The Situating Architecture Lecture Series showcases the latest research by leading architectural scholars, with a particular focus on innovative methodologies and critical theories in architecture and urban studies. Curated by Professor Barbara Penner, the series is open to all. The book launch will be followed by celebratory drinks, courtesy of the Polish Institute in London.

Natalia Romik is an architect, designer, artist, and curator. In 2018 Romik was awarded a PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London for a thesis Post-Jewish Architecture of Memory within Former Eastern European Shtetls. As consultant with Nizio Design studio (Warsaw) she contributed to the core exhibition design of the Polin Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw and co-curated its exhibitions Estranged: March ’68 and Its Aftermath (2018) and “(post)JEWISH… Shtetl Opatów Through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt” (2024). Her research into Jewish hide-outs during the Second World War concluded with the exhibition Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival, presented in 2022 in the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, and among others, in the Jewish Museum Frankfurt. In 2022, Natalia Romik was awarded Dan David Prize, and in 2025 joined the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin as Yehudit and Yehuda Elkana Fellow.