ELABORATIONS INTERNATIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF POLISH URBAN PLANNING SAWOMIR GZELL MEASURES OF SUCCESS tecture, becomes an embarrassing and irresponsible composition of not-quite-new designs arranged of It is not easy to judge which examples of Polish toy bricks which should have been given to children, contemporary urban planning might possess the sta- though sampling in art and music fares quite well tus of works that achieved international success, and meanwhile. Bearing out the proposition on dyna- this includes creations in Poland as well as abroad. mism of assessment of urban designs is also the ac- One needs criteria for assessment, but intuition sug- ceptance of historicism, achieved some time ago and gests that even severe ones might be useless, while now well grounded, although the fashion for this is the selection of such criteria is not obvious. The num- too proceeding towards a decline. Another con [ rma- ber of citations, the frequency of publication of de- tion is the development of neomodernism in many scriptions and photographs, the number of imitators forms, even though critique of modernism itself and such like can of course be quanti [ ed, but against continues, with the effect i.a. that modernist archi- what should the resulting calculations be measured? tectural realizations are being physically removed; One would need to produce comparative tables but for instance the demolishing, ostensibly because of in spite of the work done, these would never bring frail condition, of department stores Supersam at about convincingly objective results. On the other Plac Unii Lubelskiej and Pawilon Chemii at Bracka hand, assessments transcending simple awarding of street in Warsaw, or the railway station in Katowice, points, such as admiration (or condemnation) of crit- or adding on buildings, or painting in bright colours ics, academic analyses, colleagues’ opinions, media even renowned housing estates constructed between reports etc, are obviously emburdened with the sin 1960-1980. of subjectivism and thus should only be auxiliary Thirdly, it is a fact that Polish urban planning and material. architecture never had any real introduction to the Secondly, the problem is that the value (in what- world information circuit, mainly because reports ever way measured) of a work may change with the were few and far between, and also for language rea- passage of time for reasons altogether insubstantial. sons because if anything did get published, as a rule This happens, e.g. with long-despised social realism, it was in Polish. In Western Europe or in the USA which revives at least as a theme for study, and ur- any larger project (larger does not necessarily relate ban designs from the time are considered worthy of to quality) was extensively described in special edi- visits, or even perhaps, of imitation 1. tions of albums or books, usually in two languages, At the same time postmodernism, which to many whereas in Poland nothing of the sort happened (nor was also sourced among others in socialist archi- does). Another real problem is the scant number of 1 Between 24-25.09.2011 Warsaw’s Society for the Preservation character? What is in the future for the interiors of the Palace of of Historic Monuments organised a symposium devoted to „Th- Culture? ... The architecture and urban planning of social realism reatened relics of social realism” commenting thus: „Will the ar- to a very large degree shaped the image of the city after World chitecture of social realism disappear from the Warsaw citysca- War 2 and nowadays more and more often attention is brought to pe, obliterated by a layer of styrofoam? Will complexes such as the need for its protection. Plac Konstytucji, Mariensztat, Plac Hallera preserve their unique 15 periodicals. There are some dedicated to architecture DOMESTIC ICONS but urban planning is sadly neglected. Generally, one or two publications survive on the market, when The beginnings were quite good. At the turn of these disappear, replacements do not surface for a the 20th century, in the early days of construction long time 2. of European “modern cities” we had at least several Fourthly, a grand majority of urban projects are high ranking representatives 4. Out of the blueprints spatial plans which are legal documents that, once for cities in Poland, it is worth recalling the com- adopted, no longer belong to their authors. They do petition plan for Cracow from 1910 and The initial not become monuments of urban planning, although draft for the regulation plan of the city of Warsaw if each corresponded to the layout of Barcelona, prepared under Tomasz To wi Lski in 1916, which Brasilia, Chandigarh, etc, it would have the chance excellently solved, in the opinions of a number of to be preserved in other ways than as provided by European urban planners, the complicated problems the instructions attached to the zoning laws. This op- of a metropolis in line with modern principles of its portunity presented itself to the new city of Tychy, formation 5. In free Poland, reunited after 1918, there built in the early 1950s in Silesia according to plans was the plan of Gdynia by Roman Feli Lski and An- by Kazimierz Wejchert and Hanna Adamczewska toni Kuncewicz from 1925, the construction of the (later Adamczewska Wejchert). Sadly, the methods Central Industrial Zone in the fork of rivers Vistula of construction for Tychy, decreed by the political and San, and the representative Marshall Pi sudski authorities, in the shape of amorphous groups of pre- Quarter with Mokotowskie Fields and the Temple fabricated, uni [ ed multi-family houses, which took of Divine Providence in Warsaw 6. Each of these the modernist idea to absurd proportions, ruined that projects (completed or not) had a different origin. chance. Gdynia with its liberal use of space, excellent com- Fifthly, an urban planning project will not appear positional combination of uneven land and \ at sea, where, as in Poland, urban designing has in fact been modernist architecture with a maritime twist, lavish struck out as an instrument of space management, use of expanses of public space, to this day does not and public interest expressed in designing space in have many imitators of comparable status. The Cen- the third dimension is contested by parliamentarians tral Industrial Zone, planted relatively far from the who make the spatial planning laws, state adminis- country’s borders in result of economic considera- tration, municipal authorities, local councils, inves- tions as well as national security, was magni [ cently tors and plot owners. Whereas in Western Europe rational. This also concerned the industrial towns and in the USA (also in countries to which these ex- planned there such as Stalowa Wola or Skar bysko port their urbanist products) the number of projects Kamienna, and architectural designing that was no concerning large city fragments and publications worse than the popular example of Bata’s Zlin built presenting them is on the rise, in Poland it would be more or less at the same time by the Czechs. Lastly, dif [ cult to [ nd even a few such examples 3. the Marshall Pi sudski quarter, designed in Warsaw Let this sad picture [ nd summary in a review of in the late 1930s and never built because of the Sec- efforts that had the chance to come into their own ond World War; having a „country’s leader” origin within European urban planning as its representative close in expression to Il Duce’s spacious fora in Ita- examples though only a few succeeded. ly. Perhaps this is not the best relationship, nonethe- 2 Among the really scandalous is the decision by the National under a variety of titles, with regard to various functions, and Chamber of Town Planners to refuse any assistance with main- nothing points to any optimistic resolution soon. taining the periodical „Urbanista”. Publications issued in limited 4 K.K. Paw owski, Pocz =tki polskiej nowoczesnej my Vli urbani- numbers at schools of architecture do not have the proper circu- stycznej , in: Sztuka oko o 1900 , PWN, Warsaw, 1969. lation nor popularity to exist without support, in spite of their 5 J. Purchla, Jak powsta nowoczesny Kraków , Wydawnictwo Li- generally high scholarly standards. terackie, Cracow, 1990; T. Kotaszewicz, Koncepcje przestrzen- 3 A truly curious case is Plac De [ lad square in Warsaw, the „he- ne rozwoju Warszawy w pracach Tadeusza To wi Lskiego 1916 art of the city” as one would want to say, work on the drafts - 1946 , series Krajobraz Warszawski, District Of [ ce for Warsza- for which has been underway for twenty years, since 1992, in a wa Centrum borough, Warsaw, 1994, variety of con [ gurations of designing and organisational teams, 6 M. So tysik, Gdynia. Miasto dwudziestolecia mi Bdzywojenne- go , PWN, Warsaw, 1993. 16 less at the time we did not know the things about ever, that for such extended periods there was no fascism that we do now, and that is why the National economic forecasting which should be at the funda- Museum could happen between 1926-1938, a mod- ment of spatial development projects. Boles aw Mal- ern edi [ ce then, nowadays a backdrop for [ lms from isz concluded that long-term studies should be based the fascist era, but still a grand, monumental build- on information that is given anyway, i.e. analysis of ing of ultra-high quality. the physical features of the land. He reminded that a In the [ rst years of the 20th century, very popular city, as it spreads onto surrounding areas, is met by in Poland was the idea of the garden city . The above- existing obstacles, natural and arti [ cial (e.g. railway said plans of Cracow and Warsaw were created un- lines).