Become an A&B portal user and receive giveaways!
Become an A&B portal user and receive giveaways!
maximize

"The failure of the year, of the decade, of the thirty years is the housing policy in Poland."

15 of January '25

Hits and kits of 2024

December - a time of summaries. The old year is gone (sad melody in the background), the new one is just around the corner (fanfare). The old one was so-so, it could have been better, but it would be a sin to complain. The new one brings hope for changes for the better. It's time to pick the five best buildings, ten favorite songs (Spotify will help us with this), three each of archivtops and archishtops. Hits and kits. It's time to create a list of archi-hits. The latter comes harder and harder for me every year. Maybe it's the result of material fatigue? A conviction that architecture is not the most important thing at all? Hits and kits replace successes and failures of initiatives and activities covering a broader spectrum than "four walls and a roof."

The failure of the year, of the decade, of the thirty years is the housing policy in Poland. The withdrawal of the state and throwing everything to developers. The most expensive mortgages in Europe. Architects and architects turned into PUM squeezers as a result of the neoliberal experiment. Flippers rising to the status of media celebrities and entrepreneurial heroes. The patchwork, which was brilliantly described by Bartosz Jozefiak (his book "Patodeweloperka. This is not a country to live in" is a success that tastes overly bitter, because I would have preferred that this otherwise very good book had not had the opportunity to be written).

It is a failure that the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk has upheld the decision to rebuild the Saski Palace in Warsaw. Not because it is an expensive and essentially unnecessary initiative (although I consider it excessively expensive and unnecessary). Not because recreating neoclassical architecture in reinforced concrete is questionable, to say the least. The new Saski will cover up the last war scar on Warsaw's body. It will absorb one of the last permanent ruins, that of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It will turn a place that should have served for in-depth reflection on the tragic consequences of the war into a space of tromtadracy, a pseudo-state of pomp.

Another (recent) failure was the ongoing media discussion around the new edifice of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Not the building itself by Thomas Phifer. Not the opinions of experts. The media uproar, the opinions of publicists, politicians and all those who found it indispensable to express their opinion that contributed nothing to the discourse, having little to do with the architectural quality of the work, but instead reflecting the worldview divisions in Poland.

Fortunately, the fracture, which at the level of national politics and the media seems unbridgeable, is able to disappear at the level of local communities. I consider the actions of the residents of Gdansk and Lodz, who blocked the misguided ideas of the city authorities planning, respectively, a park of lights on Gradowa Mountain and an electronic music festival in Na Zdrowiu Park, to be a huge success. Contrary to what political decision-makers may think, for most of us bread is more important than the games. That bread can be peace, respect for nature and memorials, respect for nature.

The revitalization of Liberty Square in Lodz (A2P2 Architecture & Planning and mamArchiteci) was a success. Again, as in the previously mentioned cases, the media-political wrangling surrounding the project and its implementation turned out to be a storm in a bubble. Residents have voted with their feet: they are crowding the renovated space, sitting on benches and lawns, spending time in a place that only a few years ago was capable of making even the most ardent boat people grimace with dislike.

Timeless success (just as timeless is the failure of housing policy) is the business of all those architects who put good craftsmanship over formal fireworks, and the ethos of the profession and social mission over photos (of themselves or their own realizations) on the lacquered covers of monthly magazines. Keep fighting!


Błażej Ciarkowski

Read more: A&B 1/2025 - Wood in architecture,
download free e-publications of A&B

The vote has already been cast

INSPIRATIONS