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To live in a big panel, or how a sociologist sees the city

20 of October '20

Maciej Frąckowiak, a Poznań sociologist, has lived on the Batory estate in Poznań since he was a child. He appreciates the advantages of well-designed common space, well-organized communication, accessibility to playgrounds, proximity to educational units, stores. A properly designed housing estate creates a kind of self-sufficient microcosm for residents. This is exactly the case in the Batory estate in Poznań. The protagonist of the latest episode of Domokrążcy emphasizes the importance of the existence of a community and neighborhood intimacy.

The apartment where he lives with his family is not cramped. There is room for the girls' room with separate sleeping areas, a dining room with a kitchen, which is a common space and around which family life is concentrated, a study for work and a bedroom. It's quite a comfortable living space, well-lit and functional. The estate was developed by Poznan-based Inwestprojekt.

We present an apartment in a block of apartments in one of the younger modernist estates of Poznań (1980s). Like a lens, it brings together various aspects of the modernist neighborhoods of the 1970s and 1980s. Like most blocks of flats from that time, it is made of large plates, realized by one of Poznań's large housing cooperatives and designed by Inwestprojekt, responsible for the northern areas of Poznań. Maciej's apartment, however, is no longer a cramped apartment designed with Gomulka-era norms, but a functionally planned and quite spacious dwelling based on guidelines from the second half of the 1970s. The Batory estate itself is also far from the urban stiffness of that period. In an attempt to humanize the large-panel assumptions, the idea of a traditional street and a central square was returned here. The blocks form quarters with very spacious green courtyards," reads the curatorial description.

The film was created as part of the New Plan Festival, held in Poznań from 8-14.10.2020.
The theme of this year's edition is "Home."

A&B is a media patron of the event.

Organizers: the Association of Polish Architects Poznań Branch, the Open Center
Partners: the National Cultural Center, the City of Poznań, the Center for Local Initiatives, the Zamek Cultural Center, the Wielkopolska District Chamber of Architects, SARP Wrocław, SARP Warsaw


elaborated by: MAŁGORZATA TOMCZAK

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