Because of its oft monumental scale, Soviet-era architecture has lent itself to the purpose of mega-advertising with surprising ease. Take, for example, the former Hotel Forum in Kraków, located on the south bank of the Vistula. Designed by Janusz Ingarden, construction began in 1978 and it took more than a decade to complete. When it opened, it was regarded as one of the city’s most modern buildings. Sadly, this bulding’s glory days seem firmly behind it – the hotel has long vacated the building, which now supports the rather less glamorous function of being Poland’s longest billboard. In 2013, Miasto Moje a w Nim (“My City and In It”), a group who campaign to reduce the high visibility of billboard advertising across the country, awarded the hotel-turned-billboard the dubious honour of “most ugly example of advertising that ignores the local context”. p (fs)
Radoslaw Ziomber / CC-SA 3.0
Photo: Simon Kirwan
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