Marta: Do you have any "favorite," in this negative sense, neighborhoods or districts that particularly irritate you?
Lukasz: I wouldn't want to focus on individual projects. Nowadays, large estates are rarely built, and new neighborhoods are rather constellations of more small projects that are rarely coordinated with each other. There is no point in pointing out specific names or designations, after all, some developer might then be particularly offended! [Laughs] Every resident is able to find a neighborhood or investment in their city that is already associated with a pat-developer. In my Warsaw, it's Bialoleka or Zawady, and in Krakow it's probably Ruczaj. I myself grew up in the capital's Wawer, which, as you yourself noted, is also a source of specific inspiration. My "favorite" example is fenced-in swank urbanism on floodplains. In the form of intensive multi-family housing, with small apartments.
Marta: While doing research for this talk, I read a lot of ads for apartments for rent in architecturally pathological neighborhoods, and unfortunately, in many of them, the most noble form of living amenity you can hope for nearby is a Żabka and a package store. It's sad.
Lukasz: Indeed, it often looks like this, and a mass of memes are already being created about how artificial intelligence imagines Polish urbanization. The state of affairs ridiculed in this way is obviously the result of a lack of strategic thinking, and I would link it to the aforementioned mechanism of privatization of services - stores with a little green animal in the logo or parcel machines are putty for systemic shortcomings. The latter are often criticized for their low aesthetic value, but we actually have much more serious problems than ugly parcel pick-up machines. These machines increase the spatial coverage of various services and, in terms of environmental costs, are a much better solution than individual parcel delivery to individual apartments. More questionable are the working conditions of couriers or the grossly poor parking culture associated with their operations.
Marta: I haven't yet touched on another pest, which is a house without a permit up to 70 square meters. A complete shot in the foot in terms of sprawl, spatial chaos and all the infamous slogans that have been said here many times before. Is it too late to undo this provision? Or are you a supporter of these houses? Because they do solve someone's problems, though overall we will greatly regret this step in the future.
Luke: It is impossible to solve strategic housing problems based on an individualized approach and encouraging people to live in small houses. Even if we consider miniaturization as a natural trend in modern settlements, if it is to function properly, it must rely on sharing certain services in a cohousing formula. Everything we currently know about urban planning and housing needs argues that we should strive for compact settlements, because this facilitates the delivery of services, both public and commercial, and gives better energy efficiency. If we are aware of rising environmental costs and start building settlements made up of chaotic buildings, and each property has to be separately supplied with utilities, it is difficult to applaud this solution. This idea is largely a play on the aspirations of people who want to own their own home, a political attempt to appeal to established preferences. Especially in the context of a country where a decided minority of people live in large cities. Only a third of us live in cities with more than 100,000 residents.
The center of Otwock - spatial chaos
Photo: © MOs810 CC BY-SA 4.0
Marta: But in spite of all the knowledge we have, such regulations are passing and actually quietly. Not to mention how badly it affects the entire architectural industry. I don't know where the Chamber of Architects and the professional community were when these provisions became law. Such regulations come into force, the first effects are seen in no time, and it is still not publicized as a problem.
Luke: The architectural community is not the most socially active, and that is the biggest problem with this professional group. In architectural education, the emphasis on individualism is quite strong. So architects can think of themselves as visionaries and artists, and at the same time experts, intellectually superior to other people. Why, then, should they engage in idle disputes, gripe with others and get their hands dirty with disliked politicking? The Polish parliament or city presidents are a constellation of historians, lawyers and doctors. I don't drink to any particular milieu, because both Donald Tusk and Mateusz Morawiecki are historians. But until there are at least as many architects in Polish public life as there are doctors and lawyers, similarly prestigious liberal professions, this milieu will continue to be outside the mainstream of public debate. And its influence on anything will be severely limited.
Marta: This is where I agree with you. Architects are called a profession of public trust, and it turns out that this trust is badly eroded. The architectural community does not particularly care about earning this trust either. Architects themselves have a great deal of distrust of each other and are unable to play to one goal. Architecture criticism in our country stands at a very low level. We have few architecture critics, and their voices do not flow outside the industry world. In politics, the focus should also probably be on caring for the common good rather than the welfare of the individual. The costs of building good architecture and bad architecture are very similar, it's a matter of directing the whole process well.
Luke: Of course, after all, we have already talked about the costs of omission, which can be explained by the saying "the wily one loses twice." I think that bad quality architecture in the long run may simply be more expensive. We will bear the consequences of designing this way longer and elsewhere. This stems from the model in which we operate. The developer is the main creator of today's space, but for him the cost of omission is not particularly problematic. The issue unfortunately falls on the local government and the residents themselves.
Marta: Thank you for the interview.
