Grand Prize
category: diploma design work
PLN 10,000
author:
Martyna Kędrzyńska
title
"PGR 2.0: Legacy of the idea of collectivization of agriculture. Revitalization of the village after the State Agricultural Farms in the municipality of Chojna".
university
Wroclaw University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture.
promoter
prof. Krystyna Solarek
Jury's opinion
Ms. Martyna Kędrzyńska's master's project is an outstanding work, combining a huge analytical and theoretical work, written from a wise perspective, with a "case study" - project applied to the specific conditions of the State Agricultural Farm in the village of Chojno.
The work touches on one of the most important problems of post-war Poland - the legacy of attempts to forcibly collectivize and then, as early as the 1960s and 1970s, socialist state farming. The failure of these communist endeavors left a painful, often tragic trace in public memory. In the spatial sphere, the consequences were - and still are - equally dramatic. Underinvestment in technical and social infrastructure, poverty, chaos, a break with traditional social and spatial models and now depopulation and marginalization are the legacy of the communist countryside. In turn, after 1989, the Polish countryside, and especially the villages associated with the state-owned farms, were excluded from the "advancement" that Poland's neoliberal development doctrine provided. As Ms. Kedzierska's work reads: "Superimposing all the contexts - historical, social, climate - reveals a picture of the PGR as a battlefield, the ruins of which still smolder today."
Ms. Martyna Kędrzyńska's diploma is one of the few works addressing this difficult issue. It does not make simple theses and easy or showy solutions. She talks about the process of bringing the countryside back to life, in which the practical dimension - "transforming space for the duration of life" (M. Budzynski) tries to help "heal fresh wounds" and adapt the substance of the state farm to current conditions and needs. Very helpful is historical memory, which is now often denied and replaced by presentism.
The work points out contemporary possibilities and crosses out negative connotations. Symbolic here is the adaptation of a pegeer barn (for my generation a symbol of all that is worst) into a "basilica" of local social contact space: "for cooking, eating together, arguing and reconciling." (M. Kędrzynska III. Architecture: the village basilica).
Regardless of the great intellectual charge, the author's architectural designs show excellent talent and sensitivity, which are extremely important in the work of an Architect. It is also worth mentioning the mature workshop of depicting thoughts enriched with a touch of irony, self-irony and a sense of humor.
