Text by Agata Pyzik, illustrations by Dagmara Berska, Parastudio*
Polish critic and author Agata Pyzik questions the value of current prestige projects in Poland and says that by looking West, the country is searching in the wrong direction for its architectural future.
Among the countries of the former Soviet Bloc, Poland emerged as relatively privileged and successful following the fall of communist rule, with no civil wars or major ethnic conflicts, and a national unemployment rate that may have been high but was certainly not catastrophic – especially compared to the various republics from the erstwhile USSR. In fact, Poland always belonged to the elite of post-communist countries, rewarded for its fervent anti-communism and willingness to embrace western standards, evidenced by its early membership not only of NATO, but also of central-European associations such as the so-called Visegrad Group (together with Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary). In line with this trajectory, it was among the first wave of formerly communist states to join the European Union in 2004.
Even today, as Europe finds itself in one of its greatest financial crises, Poland still looks in comparatively good shape, thanks both to the national debt cancellation of the early 1990s but also to an unexpectedly privileged position. For while any monetary problems are kept at bay with no small assistance from EU subsidies, the country still remains outside the increasingly shaky Eurozone.
One clearly visible aspect of Poland’s post-communist success is a huge wave of newly built infrastructure and architecture. These include a much-vaunted new network of highways (the building of which has been at the expense of a slower, rather less-successful renovation of the rail system) and the tendency to view modernisation as straightforwardly proportionate to the number of new “iconic” buildings.
This has led to a huge boom of new museums. In the last decade Warsaw alone saw the opening of three new buildings: the controversial Museum of the Warsaw Uprising by architect Wojciech Obtułowicz in 2004, glorifying a failed uprising bloodily defeated by the Nazis; the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, designed by Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamäki, which was finally completed in 2013; and the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw by RAr2 Architecture Laboratory in 2010. Add this to a slew of other cultural buildings from Kraków to Toruń to Gdańsk and beyond.
The boom, which started during the reign of a nationalist right wing party Law & Justice, had a lot to do with former President Lech Kaczyński’s initiative to build new cultural institutions. Despite the ideological war between the right wing and liberals that emerged with new intensity around that time, he equally supported initiatives unconnected with the line of his party.
»such prestige projects are a late hiccup of the bilbao effect«
But beyond public cultural buildings, recent aspirational architecture in Poland has also taken the form of investor buildings such as office towers and luxury flats, including a cluster hailed as the “Canary Wharf” of Warsaw and various high-rises in Gdynia and Wrocław, along with dozens of other private residences and private museums belonging to millionaires. These include the European Krzysztof Penderecki Centre for Music (DDJM Architects, 2013) in rural Lusławice, and the Stary Browar art and shopping centre in Poznań (Studio ADS, 2003), property of the richest woman in Poland, Grażyna Kulczyk.
Such prestige projects are a late hiccup of the Bilbao Effect, whereby a little-known town pins its hopes for international fame, increased tourism and measurable financial results on a flashy new architectural object.
Both Łódź and Warsaw have each been heralded as the “new Berlin” from certain quarters. But this is at a time when that the economic power of the creative class, as hailed by urban studies theory svengali Richard Florida, appears to be in decline. In the face of arts budget cuts across Europe, even the strongest players, like Berlin, are struggling to play that card these days.
Nevertheless, Poland is reluctant to give up on its dream of westernisation; in fact, quite the contrary. In the last few years many of the pioneering projects conceived in this spirit have been completed and the goal of eradicating as much of the former communist architecture and infrastructure as possible is still enthusiastically pursued by a largely anti-communist and Catholic establishment. Poland’s politicians, especially at the local level, cannot and do not want to stop the neoliberal processes of privatisation and outsourcing. This has left many of their voters feeling increasingly unequal and angry with an ostensibly populist building mania that is little more than bread and circuses.
Real social functions seldom feature in contemporary Polish architecture. This was neatly summed up by a recent exhibition held at the temporary Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (October 2014 to January 2015) in collaboration with the major Polish architecture monthly Architektura-murator, which aimed to sum up “25 years of freedom” through models of 25 major building projects. And what was there to see? A handful of public buildings, a few district halls, one or two local community cultural houses, and some stadiums designed for the European Championship in 2012. There were almost no hospitals or schools and zero social housing. Instead the selecting jury lauded millionaires’ private institutions, several “experimental” private residencies and one “low-cost” block estate.
This selection was made in a national building climate where one of the greatest problems is the lack of public or affordable housing and with dodgy sales of public properties to private owners leaving many tenants threatened with eviction.
One such scandalous situation is to be found in the post-industrial city of Łódź. The very foundation of the town’s existence and its core architectural identity – factories – became shells for a massive “urban renewal”, which involved revitalising several old textile mills. This revitalisation was in fact a conversion into an enormous shopping mall complex ironically called “Manufacture”, leaving the rest of the impoverished city to rot. Some of Łódź’s most interesting developments are now happening in the remaining former factories, where the call has shifted away from vacuous new-builds towards new concepts applied to old infrastructure, which is happening elsewhere in the country as well. Sometimes the result is dispiriting, like Warsaw’s “creative cluster”, the Soho Factory, parachuted into a disused engineering works and standing in awkward contrast to the surrounding dilapidated neighbourhood. On the other hand, the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, temporarily housed in a beautiful 1960s modernist former furniture store, has a wide audience and rich programme, and is doing very well without an expensive new building. Nevertheless, by 2020, one is scheduled to be built, next to the Palace of Culture and Science, designed by American architect Thomas Phifer.
Agata Pyzik is a writer contributing to many art, architecture and design-oriented magazines, such as Frieze, Icon and The Guardian. Her book Poor but Sexy. Culture Clashes in Europe East and West (Zero Books) was published in the UK in 2014. She often focuses on Eastern European issues.
nuitssansnuit.blogspot.com
Parastudio* is a functional graphics, art and design studio established by Grzegorz Podsiadlik and Maja Krysiak in Kraków in 2006. It values visual quality, identity of projects, simplicity and functionalism. Parastudio* has since attracted a lot of talented graphic designers to its team – from a country renowned for their excellent graphic design tradition. The Parastudio* project team consists of highly qualified people with broad experience – designers, artists, web and mobile developers. It has been frequently awarded and honoured in design contests, including a silver medal in the European Design Award. The illustrations for this story were drawn by Dagmara Berska and our cover illustration for this issue is by Damian Nowak.
parastudio.pl
»Polish architecture that strives to be iconic reveals our inferiority complexes and pretensions about becoming part of Europe«
In contrast to the desired effect, Polish architecture that strives to be iconic tends to reveal our inferiority complexes and pretensions about becoming a part of Europe – even if we were always nominally in it anyway – hence the pushy Europeanisation of most of the new centres’ names. This strategy often displays a cynical and uneven pseudo-modernisation, associating progress and modernity only with superficial and shallow investments, neglecting any real, deeper associations with the place: its culture, history or social fabric.
One solution, albeit still utopian, could be an embracing of Poland’s peripherality, both in the geographical sense and in the feeling of isolation embedded in cultural memory, instead of pushing us as far as possible into western Europe. Visitors to Warsaw or Wrocław are not attracted because these places are like any other European city. A really bold move would be to embrace all episodes of Poland’s history and make people fall in love with Stalinist palaces and modernist pavilions alike, for the future of Polish iconic architecture might well turn out to be its past. I
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