Alexandra Gordowy received first prize in the PUM: User and Resident Space competition. Her work entitled. "The Pleasure of Boredom. Home as Productive and Unproductive Space in the Context of a Residential Tenement in Lodz, East Street" will be published by the Bęc Zmiana publishing house in spring 2020.
PUM is a competition organized by PFR Real Estate aimed at people who have dedicated their research thesis to the broader issue of housing. On Monday, December 16, 2019, the results announcement ceremony and post-competition debate took place at the CDT Central Technology House in Warsaw .
Out of sixty-three submissions dealing with diverse architectural, urban and social issues, the jury decided to award the first place to Aleksandra Gorodwy for her work entitled. "The Pleasure of Boredom. Home as productive and unproductive space in the context of a residential building in Lodz, East Street", written at the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Below we publish the abstract of the work done under the supervision of Dr. Armina Pilav, Dr. Tom Avermaete and Robert Notro.
The pleasure of boredom
Aleksandra Gorodva's project is an architectural and urban reflection with both philosophical and social dimensions. The center of the author's considerations is a house - an existing post-labor tenement in Lodz, on East Street. She used this context as a backdrop to depict life, in its intriguing, complex, urban form, caught almost in the middle of an economic, social and architectural transformation: from an overworked society, unfamiliar with a day off from routine, into a society with multitasking abilities also dependent on work and deeply bored.
illustration for the work entitled. "The pleasure of boredom"
© Alexandra Gordowy
"Home as a productive and unproductive space," is a project that looks at the architecture of everyday life through the lens of praising boredom. Alexandra Gordowy recalls Georges Teyssot, who in his essay " Boredom and Bedroom: The Supression of the Habitual " describes emptiness - boredom - as pure potential ( pure possibility) and the opposite of form. The boredom of urbanized environments co-creates the narrative of city-dwelling societies. Dwelling, habitation, residential routines and daily routines analyzed through the prism of the "domestic demon"¹ of boredom is a deconstruction of the myth of the modern home on three levels: comfort, patriarchal family and productivity.
Boredom, according to Walter Benjamin, is essential for maintaining inner balance. It creates a space for the mind and sensual experience to merge, an opportunity to assimilate, to enter into a true conscious and intimate relationship with the environment. And this is also the goal of the laureate's work - an architectural formulation of the concept of dwelling as a space of unproductive practices.
post-competition debate
From left: Prof. Marek Bryx, Karolina Tulkowska-Słyk, Wiktor Mrozowski,
Aleksandra Gordowy, Barbara Gryka, Bogna Świątkowska
© organizers' archives
PUM honors
The competition jury also awarded first-degree honorable mentions to a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology - Jolanta Muszczak for her work entitled. "Residential architecture and the condition of modern man. Design of a multi-family building" and Sylwia Pędziejewska for her thesis titled "The city as an ecosystem - structures for improvement. "The city as an ecosystem - structures improving the metabolism of the city on the example of a model quarter". Second degree honorable mention was awarded to Łukasz Dmowski for his work entitled. "Estate inscribed in the landscape as an attempt to create a civil and pro-environmental society in Poland," written at the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology, and Wiktor Mrozowski for his thesis titled "The role of parking norms in the city". "The role of residential parking norms in mobility management on the example of Warsaw", written at the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies of the University of Warsaw.
Congratulations!
¹ Artur Schopenhauer
compiled by {tag:AuthorAiB}
based on materials by Aleksandra Gorodwa and press materials
Illustrations courtesy of Aleksandra Gordova and the organizers of the PUM competition
