Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland

Transformation, Symbolic Form and National Identity

Florian Urban

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000291971
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Architekturkritik

Garish churches, gabled panel blocks, neo-historical tenements—this book is about these and other architectural oddities that emerged in Poland between 1975 and 1989, a period characterised by the decline of the authoritarian socialist regime and waves of political protest. During that period, committed architects defied repressive politics and persistent shortages, and designed houses and churches which adapted eclectic historical forms and geometric volumes, and were based on traditional typologies.

These buildings show a very different background of postmodernism, far removed from the debates over Robert Venturi, Philip Johnson, or Prince Charles in Western Europe and North America—a context in which postmodern architecture stood not for world-weary irony in an economically saturated society, but for individualised counter-propositions to a collectivist ideology, for a yearning for truth and spiritual values, and for a discourse on distinctiveness and national identity.

Postmodern Architecture in Socialist Poland argues that this new architecture marked the beginning of socio-political transformation and at the same time showed postmodernism's reconciliatory potential. In light of massive historical ruptures and wartime destruction, these buildings successfully responded to the contradictory desires for historical continuity and acknowledgment of rupture and loss. Next to international ideas, the architects took up domestic traditions, such as the ideas of the Polish school of historic conservation and long-standing national-patriotic narratives. They thus contributed to the creation of a built environment and intellectual climate that have been influential to date.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in postmodern architecture and urban design, as well as in the socio-cultural background and transformative potential of architecture under socialism.

1Architectural Debates in Late Socialist Poland

CHAPTER SUMMARY

This chapter lays out the intellectual framework of architectural production under the late socialist regime. While censorship was ongoing and official journals such as Architektura or Komunikat SARP still did not openly criticise buildings or comment on the economic situation, theoretical debates were allowed to flourish. This included an increasingly open criticism of functionalism in architecture and planning, a domestic discourse on “national architecture,” and the reception of international postmodernism. An important inspiration for the discourse over historical forms came from the Polish school of historic conservation and the prestigious reconstruction of central Warsaw and Gdańsk. These influences account for several distinctive features of Polish postmodernism: a yearning for spirituality and a “deeper truth” beyond scientific rationality, a concern with national identity, and a search for meaningful urban spaces in response to the unsatisfactory panel-built housing complexes.

POLAND AROUND 1980

Postmodernism coalesced in Poland around 1980, at the peak of economic crisis and political unrest. The socialist regime was under increasing pressure, riddled by economic decline and popular protest against party rule. The moderate rise in living standards financed by foreign credits under party leader Edward Gierek in the early 1970s had soon given way to economic hardship, peaking in the “hunger demonstrations” of 1981. But the years 1975–81 were also a period of optimism and cultural freedom, in which political protests inspired hopes for a profound transformation at every level of society. Along with the papacy of John Paul II, the former archbishop of Kraków, Poles felt a growth of religious freedom, as visible religious practice and the presence of the Catholic Church in public life were increasingly tolerated. The ensuing carrot-and-stick policy, in which repressions alternated with concessions, made the party leaders' weakness even more apparent and continued to allow for new cultural expressions, including architectural innovation. This situation did not fundamentally change during the regime's last wave of authoritarianism after the 1981 appointment of General Wojciech Jaruzelski as First Secretary and the subsequent declaration of martial law. Architectural innovation continued throughout the 1980s and beyond the end of the regime in 1989.

The years around 1980 were also internationally a key period for postmodernism. In Venice, the first Biennale of Architecture opened in 1980 under the motto “The Presence of the Past,” making postmodern architects such as Aldo Rossi, Robert Venturi, and Michael Graves widely known and popularising the ideas of organiser Paolo Portoghesi and his collaborators, among them Christian Norberg-Schulz, Vincent Scully, and Kenneth Frampton.¹ In Berlin, the preparations for the International Building Exhibit 1987, mostly known by its German acronym IBA, entered its crucial phase with landmark buildings that would adapt historical typologies for new residences in the inner city, including Alvaro Siza's multifamily house Bonjour Tristesse (designed 1980, realised 1982–84), the Urban Villas curated by Rob Krier (competition won in 1980, realised 1980–84, architects Aldo Rossi, Hans Hollein, Rob Krier, and others), or the Lützowplatz Housing (Oswald Mathias Ungers, 1979–84).² Charles Jencks's The Language of Postmodern Architecture, the most popular book on the new current, first published in 1977, went into its third edition in 1980.

This architectural discourse was mirrored in the conference of the Union internationale d'architects (UIA—International Architects' Union), which took place in Warsaw in June 1981. This happened at the peak of what is often referred to as Karnawał Solidarności (“Carnival of Solidarity”)—the period of political freedom between 1979 and 1981, when, spearheaded by the protesters of the Solidarity Trade Union under Lech Wałęsa, the tottering socialist regime was forced to make significant concessions and start political reforms. At this event Polish architects shared the spirit of hope and optimism with their international guests, including Charles Jencks and Bruno Zevi, and at the same time raised expectations, as the official journal Architektura put it, to “overcome the Athens Charter.”³

Indeed, in an unusually open way for an Eastern bloc country the conference participants connected international anxieties about social justice and ecology with particular Polish concerns about the degradation of the built environment.⁴ After three decades of industrialised construction nearly every Polish city was dotted with shoddily executed system-built housing complexes, and the conviction that functionalist modernism had to be overcome was widely shared. The signature projects of the most famous Polish modernists, such as Oskar and Zofia Hansen, Halina Skibniewska, Kazimierz Wejchert and Hanna Adamczewska-Wejchert, or Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak, were still considered exemplary. At the same time, the disenchantment with cheaply built functionalist architecture, in particular prefabricated panel construction, was a common point of reference for both architects and the general population.

Consequently, the hosts of the UIA Conference did not celebrate any icons of modernism, but rather the neo-historical reconstruction of Warsaw's Old Town (rebuilt 1945–63), which will be discussed further later. At the conference it received the Sir Patrick Abercrombie Award—as the editor-in-chief of the journal Architektura, Andrzej Bruszewski, pointed out, “not as a conservationist phenomenon, but as the best of contemporary housing estates [osiedle mieszkaniowe] in Warsaw.”⁵ Small-scale, historically conscious architecture and urbanism were also themes of the international “UNESCO student prize” launched at the conference.⁶

The bilingual conference catalogue, published by Architektura's editorial team, became a forum for a new architecture that displayed a lush, historically inspired vocabulary unexpected in an economically challenged socialist context.⁷ This included the historically inspired Holy Spirit Church in Tychy (1978–81 Stanisław Niemczyk), the regionalist Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Śródborów near Warsaw (1979–84, Małgorzata Handzelewicz-Wacławek, Zbigniew Wacławek), and the postmodern housing complex Radogoszcz-East in Łódź (1978–89, Jakub Wujek, Zdzisław Lipski, Andrzej Owczarek), which will all be discussed in this book. The catalogue also published many unbuilt projects distinguished in architectural competitions, which in socialist Poland were an important way of circulating new ideas. The UIA Conference thus presented both a flourishing theoretical debate and examples of a fledgling postmodern practice, which reflected the state of the architectural discourse at the time.

INTERNATIONAL POSTMODERNISM AND THE POLISH DISCOURSE

The rise of postmodern currents in theory and practice around 1980 was favoured by increasingly porous borders, which led to an intensified exchange between Poland and Western Europe and to the encounter of domestic traditions and international debates. International influences were noticeable since the 1970s, when an increasing number of Polish architects managed to travel abroad. Although compared to today international trips were rare and carefully planned events, the Polish borders had always been more permeable than those of some other Eastern bloc countries. Emigration had been widespread for most of the twentieth century, and many families maintained contact with their émigré relatives in the United States, France, West Germany, or elsewhere. Also the economic ties between the Eastern bloc and left-leaning governments in Africa and the Middle East provided numerous architects with working experience abroad.⁸ Likewise, particularly during the 1980s, numerous buildings in Poland were financed by Polish émigré communities in Western Europe or North America or by returning migrants and seasonal workers.

At the same time inverse professional exchange was very limited. Throughout the socialist period there is next to no evidence of foreign architects working in Poland or of Polish buildings designed in international collaboration—the unloved, Soviet-financed Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw created by Russian architect Lev Rudniev and built 1953–55 was probably the only example.

Like in most socialist countries where resources were limited and publications tightly controlled, the architectural environment in Poland was rather contained and developed around university departments and professional organisations. As the socialist planned economy did not encourage professional mobility and architects often remained with the same municipal or institutional employer for decades, architectural milieus were often very localised. This changed only slowly with the introduction of economic reforms in the 1980s.

The most significant nationwide institution was the Stowarzyszenie Architektów Polskich (SARP, Polish Architects' Association), which had its headquarters in Warsaw and regional chapters in every major city. SARP's importance in channelling architectural discourses can hardly be overestimated. Next to conferences and professional meetings SARP organised scores of nationwide architectural competitions every year. Many of them were never intended to be implemented, and only a portion of them led to built projects. But they were well publicised and an important means to exchange ideas across cities and regions. SARP also published the journal Architektura, Poland's largest architectural periodical with a print run of about 15,000, whose standing in the discipline was unmatched.

Although SARP was not an independent organisation in the sense of an architects' association in a Western country, during the 1970s and 1980s it operated with a comparatively high degree of political freedom. SARP functionaries were rarely disciplined by the party rulers, and censorship of Architektura and other periodicals was limited. At the time journal...