The interview with Professor Marta Lesniakowska appeared in A&B 6'2020
Why was the knowledge of the architect deliberately erased from architectural education?
"Social Principles for the Design of Housing Estates" by Barbara Brukalska was published in 1948 and almost immediately went on the index of banned books, and the print run was destroyed. Fortunately, the work of the avant-garde architect fascinates more and more people, and Brukalskaya's kitchen, the Silence Room or the Great Glass are being used by a growing number of contemporary designers. Why did it take more than seventy years for interest in the architect's intellectual legacy to lead to work on the reissue of her book? Who was Barbara Brukalska, and why was the knowledge of an architect who belonged to the forefront of the world avant-garde deliberately erased from architectural education? These questions are answered by historian and critic of art, architecture and photography of the XIX-XXI centuries, Professor Marta Lesniakowska of the Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Ewa Szymczyk: Professor, where should we start when we want to get to know Barbara Brukalska and her concepts? Who was one of the first starchitects of Polish architecture?
Marta Lesniakowska: Brukalska belonged to the first generation of women who were professionally prepared to practice architecture. She began her studies after World War I, but graduated in the early 1930s, designing along the way, of course. Brukalska belonged to a group of architects with a radical, modern, modernist stance. Both she and her husband, Stanislaw, and the milieu with which she worked, grew out of concepts developed by the European avant-garde, the CIAM(Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne), or International Congress of Modern Architecture. This milieu, centered since 1928 around Le Corbusier, met to discuss the most important problems of architecture, urbanism, social life, the relationship between society and architecture in a new way. Le Corbusier involved not only architects, but also sociologists and experts on demographic issues. They were characterized by interdisciplinary and innovative thinking that questioned the traditional understanding of architecture and urbanism, and aimed at a modern, regenerative understanding of it as a space that interacts in multiple ways with humans, the users of that space.
Ewa Szymczyk: What was the Brukalskis' relationship with Le Corbusier?
Marta Lesniakowska: For many Polish modernists of that generation, Le Corbusier was an absolute idol. For Brukalska in particular, and so much so that the diploma she defended in the early 1930s was almost a plagiarism from his concept: in the villa she designed, she used an open interior adopted from Le Corbusier, with a winding staircase, large glazing and openwork furniture. She was fascinated by his concepts, which in a way resulted from their direct contacts, since the Brukalskis and the Syrkus and Piotrowski couples, as co-founders of the most important milieu of the Polish architectural and urban avant-garde, the Praesens group, were the Polish exposition at the CIAM congresses. Hence the close contacts, and so much so that, for example, Syrkusova, who was Le Corbusier's interpreter at the CIAM congresses, developed with him the idea program for the L'Esprit Nouveau pavilion for the 1925 Paris International Exhibition. Barbara Brukalska thus formed her ideological stance under the influence of the greatest artists of the European avant-garde.
Ewa Szymczyk: It must have had an impact on architecture in Poland.
Marta Lesniakowska: Yes, the ideas that were forged there were tested in practice by Barbara and Stanislaw Brukalska on Polish soil, especially during work from the late 1920s on the first avant-garde housing estate in Poland - the WSM in Żoliborz. Innovative solutions were implemented by the Brukalskis with adaptation to local realities. Brukalska's role in this project was also important because of her other first passion: gardening, which she studied at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, as was often the case with Earth's daughters, and she combined these gardening passions attractively with the architecture of the modern estate, linking the two spheres in a spatial discourse of nature-culture. The entire premise of the WSM is inscribed in a fragment of a circle. The hard geometry of the modern buildings was softened by the green belts introduced between the buildings with small architecture - green lounges: a common space that was an extension of the residential interiors, not large, subordinated to the design principle of "biological optimum of existence." This was her feminine signature and a trace of her first love, gardening. The functional-spatial linkage of the architecture with the interior gardens was a consciously thought-out Ciam concept solving socio-spatial issues. Brukalska used these experiences in her book "Social Principles of Designing Residential Estates."
Ewa Szymczyk: What were the WSM apartments themselves like? Can you see Brukalska's design thought in them?
Marta Lesniakowska: The design of the apartments had to do with social stratification. Individual houses were addressed to specific users: there were different solutions for workers' apartments, others for intelligentsia or for a single person. Among the design ideas that Brukalska introduced, there were very many Ciam postulates, as well as solutions developed in a rival environment to the CIAM - the Bauhaus in Dessau, founded by Walter Gropius. At Brukalska's, one can observe how, following the example of these two schools, she opens up spaces in apartments, trying, for example, to eliminate the so-called black kitchen, which still stems from peasant traditions, opening it up to the living room - today we would say: the living room. The realization on WSM, known as Brukalska's kitchen or WSM kitchen, is one of her most famous projects: the kitchen as an open alcove with built-in furniture, on the model of ship's quarters or sleeping cars. The whole design was thoughtfully and ergonomically optimized to fit the new family model and the new kitchen user.
Brukalska's kitchen - a young, contemporary woman of the 1930s is dressed for sport; in a short skirt, flat-heeled half-shoes, shorn of her boyish haircut, as if working in the kitchen was just a temporary stop on the way to doing other activities
drawing: Barbara Brukalska | source: "Kobieta Współczesna", R. 2:1928 no. 33 p. 16
Ewa Szymczyk: Who was this new user?
Marta Lesniakowska: It was this modernist New Woman, who is no longer just a housewife raising children - she is also a working woman. This was the result of profound social and cultural changes and a paradigm shift that took place in Europe after World War I, and one of the consequences was a drastically changed social structure, the result of large losses in the male population. Then a new phenomenon appeared in the labor market, previously unknown on such a scale: an army of women, who had to secure the livelihood of their families, had to work. A woman gets completely new roles than those assigned to her before: she has to combine professional work with being a mother and wife. Brukalska created just such a modern kitchen for the modern woman: an ergonomic interior that allows for efficient kitchen work. This is well illustrated by Brukalska's drawing of "her" kitchen with the figure of a young, modern woman.
Ewa Szymczyk: Do you think Brukalska identified with the woman in the model kitchen?
Marta Lesniakowska: Yes, I interpret this drawing as a hypothetical self-portrait. Brukalska wore exactly the hairstyle of the woman in the drawing. She brought it to herself in 1925 from the World Exhibition in Paris. One of the most popular figures of the early 20th century - Josephine Baker - came from New York for this great event of the modern world. The beautiful black dancer and singer brought jazz to Europe, causing a cultural scandal in the process. Dancing half-naked, adorned with ostrich feathers and a skirt made of bananas, Josephine was a phenomenon for the Parisian public. As an aside, the hairstyle she wore at the time was designed for her by one of the most famous Parisian hairdressers of the time - Pole Antoni Cierplikowski. By getting rid of the woman's cumbersome-to-maintain long hair, he facilitates her entry into her new dual role as an androgynous woman, a peasant woman. The new woman begins to enter a masculine world dominated by a patriarchal scenario. Brukalska also had such a hairstyle. Brukalska was an architect designing a space intended to open the apartment to completely new rituals of daily life and, consequently, a new lifestyle for both the woman and the family. These changes also required the introduction of different furnishings: heavy upholstered furniture gave way to openwork, lightweight, hygienic furniture. This was a process that the avant-garde then initiated throughout Europe. Improved hygiene standards included the use of metal tubes previously used only in hospital furniture. A consequence of this thinking was the rearrangement of the entire home space. For example, furniture built into the wall was introduced - a couch is used when one sleeps, and closed in a closet during the day, thus freeing up valuable space. This space becomes multifunctional, arranged occasionally according to the needs of the users. Brukalska played an extremely important role in this transformation. She was an open-minded, enlightened person, creating in the latest trend. From my point of view, she is one of the most important European designers of that time, and her early interior design projects, such as the table for the sick, testify to her incredible talent and design awareness.
Brukalska's kitchen, a 1:1 mock-up made for the exhibition "The Future Will Be Different. Visions and Practices of Social Modernization after 1918," Warsaw, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, 2018.
Photo: Marta Leśniakowska
Ewa Szymczyk: To what extent can we talk about Polish or other national avant-garde projects?
Marta Lesniakowska: Avant-garde architecture, unlike other currents, is consistent in its theoretical and aesthetic assumptions; its aesthetics are a consequence of similar ideas and philosophies shared by moderns, genetically derived from common ideological sources: the visionary projects of French revolutionaries and utopian socialists. Throughout Europe, the modernist movement introduced similar solutions that varied in standards, but did not deviate from the fundamental principle. This was, to put it in Marxist terms, the internationalism of this cultural and civilizational formation, embodied in a parsimonious, reductionist aesthetic. The modernists wanted to create a world that would affect not the elite, but the wider society. It was not an elitist culture, but an egalitarian one. A good example is the evolving problem of the modern kitchen in the 1920s. Brukalskaya's kitchen project coincided with the second very important event in the history of modernist architecture, namely the creation of the so-called Frankfurt kitchen, designed as part of a model exhibition of German housing in Frankfurt am Main by architect Greta Schütte-Lihotzky. The two architects knew each other well from European modernist conventions. Eventually it was Schütte-Lihotzky's idea, not Brukalska's, that came into general use and is still in use today. If you have a kitchen that is narrow, long, with a window in the shorter wall, built with cabinets, you have the Frankfurt kitchen, a design from 1926-1927 addressed to new apartments and a new society. The kitchen, but also the bathroom, were two fundamental themes analyzed by the creators of the interwar avant-garde. The former kitchen, eliminated to the margins of the home as a dirty and dark room for servants, now became an extremely powerful cultural tool with which to blow up the traditional model of family and society. Brukalska was strongly involved in this.
Ewa Szymczyk: Architecture as a tool for social and moral revolution?
Marta Lesniakowska: Of course! I write about this in the article "Modernist in the Kitchen". - in it, I present the radicalism of these ideas, which, of course, made a huge impression on the public. But the very idea that architecture is an ideological, political tool, of course, is not a new idea: already Cicero claimed that architecture is the most political of the arts, because in it all political ideas are emphatically embodied. Brukalska was fully aware that the shaping of living space directly affects our existence. That's why she opened her apartments to greenery acting on the senses of the viewers.
Ewa Szymczyk: How did Brukalska's book come about and why was it banned so quickly?
Marta Lesniakowska: In my opinion, the publication "Social Principles of Designing Housing Estates" is one of the most important in the history of Polish architectural theory. Brukalska started working on it during the occupation, finished it immediately after the war and in 1948 the book appeared in print. Unfortunately, this was the time of installing communism, so "Social Principles..." turned out to be ideologically incorrect, and came into violent ideological conflict with the ideology promoted by the communist authorities.
Ewa Szymczyk: What was it that was not liked?
Marta Lesniakowska: Brukalska designed for a different society than the one the communists wanted to "produce". In her case, society is not homogeneous, but based on the foundation of liberal democracy of the Western type. Therefore, settlements should be diverse. Communists, on the other hand, see society as a mass with uniformly agglomerated needs. Brukalskaya's emphasis on the liberal-democratic aspect of settlement architecture, manifested in differentiated housing models according to occupation, family size or life aspirations, was unacceptable to the new regime. An excellent example of Brukalska's thinking about contemporary society is her Collective Home for Singles, designed for singles and childless married couples, with a variety of common spaces, described in detail in "Social Principles..." and realized on WSM Colony XIII in 1948.
House for the lonely, WSM Warsaw Żoliborz, Kolonia XIII, designed by Barbara and Stanisław Brukalscy, 1948
photo: Marta Lesniakowska
Ewa Szymczyk: Such contemporary cohousing?
Marta Leśniakowska: That's right, this house is an exemplary example of such a model, growing out of avant-garde concepts promoting new models of habitation in the first half of the 20th century. However, it struck, like other solutions presented in Brukalska's book, at the programmatic foundations of the socialist family promoted by the communists. Brukalskaya's book and the illustrations in it were considered ideologically hostile by the political censors of the time. Her liberal-freedom, democratic stance manifesting the modernist regeneration myth realized through new architecture and urban assumptions stabilizing a new symbolic structure was radically critical of the doctrine of socialist realism. Therefore, Brukalskaya's book was deprecated as a "whispered mutation of the Voice of America," "sociological donkishness," a "sick theory" promoting liberal individualism, and condemned to be milled. Interestingly, another pre-war avant-gardist, Praesens co-founder Helena Syrkusova, had a hand in this.
Ewa Szymczyk: A former friend.
Marta Lesniakowska: Yes. Before the war they attended CIAM congresses together, were active in the Praesens group, and during the war Brukalska helped Syrkusova when her husband Szymon was imprisoned in Auschwitz. After the war, however, their contacts loosened. Syrkusova declared herself a communist and became Bierut's right hand on architectural matters, one of the prominent figures among communist architects assembling the ideology of socialist realism. Conflict between these architects with radically different backgrounds and views was inevitable. Syrkusova eliminated her "friend" from the game, practically depriving Brukalska and her husband of the opportunity to practice architecture. Although Brukalska was given a position as a professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology, incidentally as the first woman, she could not officially preach avant-garde content there. She was watched and invigilated.
Ewa Szymczyk: How is it that while studying architecture at a seemingly renowned Polish university, I heard nothing about Brukalska the designer or interior designer, nor about her theories of shaping housing estates?
Marta Lesniakowska: This is due to the still-fragmented knowledge of interwar culture, especially the role of women architects, who were excluded and discriminated against in various ways in a patriarchal, misogynistic architectural environment. Their work remained hidden, absent from the architectural space and the discourse about it. I took up this topic as the first female researcher in Poland, fundamentally changing the well-established stereotypical view of modernism, including the role of such prominent and until recently marginalized personalities as Barbara Brukalska. In addition, the fact that Brukalskaya's book was on the index meant that it virtually had no chance to exist. In addition, during the period of Socialist Realism, the entire avant-garde trend, headed by Le Corbusier, was eliminated from the university programs, as well as the architects associated with this orientation before the war. Therefore, the center of cobrusierism was located not at the Faculty of Architecture of the polytechnic, but at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. It was there that Ihnatowicz, Hansen, Soltan and a group of prominent designers and artists formed the famous Research and Architectural Establishments bringing together the modernist "resistance movement," quietly continuing to work on the modern architecture incriminated at the polytechnic. Surprisingly, the consequences of this split between the polytechnic and ASP communities can still be observed today. The ideologically reduced staff at the Faculty of Architecture was long unable to adequately educate the postwar generation of architects. The generation of avant-garde architects, meanwhile, had no chance to realize their creative potential in the new system realities. A good case study is the well-known case of Jerzy Sołtan, an associate of Le Corbusier, later associated with the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, who, together with a group of leading modern designers, prepared for the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels an unusual, innovative Polish pavilion, one of the most important, next to the Warsaw Supersam, buildings in the history of postwar architecture. Unfortunately, the communist authorities forbade its realization. In such an atmosphere, many architects, suffering various repressions, left the country.
Ewa Szymczyk: It seems that if it weren't for World War II we would be at the forefront of modern architectural education.
Marta Lesniakowska: The Warsaw Faculty of Architecture, which was established in 1915, was one of the most modern universities in Europe in the interwar period. This is where the boldest concepts were coming out of, this is where Swierczynski brought Le Corbusier's magazines and texts from Paris, this is where a whole generation of modernists, the creators of the Warsaw school of architecture, came out of. After the war, some of them, as the aforementioned "resistance movement," made an effort to transfer these great achievements to more favorable times. During this period of the "Great Depression," the status of architects as a free profession was abolished, and nationalized architects were either banned from practicing their profession if they did not submit to the doctrine of Socialist Realism, or they were imprisoned in collective state design offices carrying out commissions en masse and anonymously from the sole investor, the state. The first studios restoring the profession of architecture as a creative profession were established only in the 1980s. And after 1989 it was a completely different world.
Ewa Szymczyk: It's already crazy....
Marta Lesniakowska: [laughs] ...all too much.
Ewa Szymczyk: Thank you for a fascinating conversation.
interviewed by: Ewa Szymczyk
Illustrations provided courtesy of Marta Lesniakowska.
