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Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. The Polish House in Warsaw, Poland by BudCudMarch 29th, 2017 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: BudCud “We are home at last. Don’t stop, don’t wait. What can you do? Help!” Those words, proclaimed by famous actors and other participants of public life, could be heard from TV sets in the time of the Tadeusz Mazowiecki government. This phrase served as the motto for the 8th edition of the annual Warsaw Under Construction festival organized by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and the Museum of Warsaw with guest curators from Architecture Institute from Cracow.  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy
 Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy The main purpose of this year’s exhibition was to show how houses and the living environment changed in Poland during the country’s transition from a socialist state to a market economy, and to present the functioning of the new model with its connections to global neoliberalism. The exhibition poses questions about the style and environment of where Poles choose to live. It was on view at the former printing house at Nowogrodzka 84/86 in Warsaw between October 22 and November 20, 2016.  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy The economic changes of the 1990s brought about the quite literal realization of the festival’s motto: many Poles actually did get to have their own houses. After years of living in apartment blocks or identical “cube” houses, they got the chance to fulfil their dreams of individualized housing, usually in the suburbs. The process was made easier by new financial mechanisms, including newly introduced mortgage loans.  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy But can a mortgaged house really be called your own home? What are the consequences of processes that took place on a massive scale in Polish cities and villages: suburbanization, gentrification, the appearance of ubiquitous gated communities? Where and how do Poles live, and why did the government back out of its active role in such a socially significant field?  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy The processes that shaped Polish homes are presented in chapters on various problems of dwelling, including urban planning, neighborhoods, typologies of single- and multi-family architecture, as well as interiors and materials. The analysis focuses on Warsaw and its agglomeration as a model of post-transformation changes, but the exhibition presents similar phenomena from all over Poland as well.  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy One of the key phenomena of Poland’s political transformation is the birth of the middle class. This social group’s ethos, aspirations and mentality have an enormous influence on public debate, and in the context of housing are tangibly reflected in living spaces. The lifestyle of this social class serves as a reference point to show the living situation of other layers of Polish society. There is a strong focus on studies of Polish identity expressed through lifestyle. One of the major questions the exhibition asks is about the role of the media in promoting a new “big stabilization,” which meant having a house with a garden outside the city or in the suburbs, as a symbol of success.  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy The exhibition is based on research on visual testimony of the transition period (magazines, books, publications, TV series, films, typical house catalogues), an analysis of quantitative data, interviews and consultations with experts, as well as photographic and film projects documenting the transformation of Poland’s living spaces after 1989. The works of Polish contemporary artists presented in the exhibition show that the post-transition iconosphere and living space were also an important subject for the visual arts.  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy ARCHITECTURE BY BUDCUD Every Pole’s dream is a very own house – typical, contemporary or traditional – that defines one’s identity, fabricates family history and shows one’s ambition. All those dreamt Polish houses have one common element – a gabled roof, that covers not only single-family homes, but also multi-storey blocks (!). The gabled roof is an archetype of a house and therefore a symbolic ultimate aspiration of a statistical adult. That is why we decided to arrange the exhibition around that structure – so it comments on the exhibited content. Formal addittions (skylights, bay or ox-eye windows, towers) to the roof’s simple form recall urban Polish landscape with the use of cardboard as a facade material emphasizing such a superficial character of constructing the identity through building a house.  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © Budcud, Bartosz Stawiarski, Alicja Szulc/Muzeum Warszawy  Image Courtesy © BudCud
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