The end of December - because that's when we finished preparing the January issue - is the best time for all kinds of summaries. And like every year, we ask practitioners and architecture critics to write what they consider a success and what they consider a failure in a given year. We do it in the convention of Kits and Hits. We give our Authors and Authors total freedom of expression and exceptionally we do not moderate this discussion. We are just very curious about it. For us, the biggest setback of this year was a marked decline in interest in the competition procedure. The large number of tenders for important spaces in Polish cities testifies to the fact that it is not quality that is most important, but cheapness. This is a very disturbing trend. We consider the pandemic-enforced interest in ecology, the climate crisis and the social relations resulting from the use of architecture to be a success. Much remains to be done, but the accuracy of the diagnosed problems makes us optimistic. 2020 has already passed into history, so we look to the future with hope! " - A&B Editorial Board
Tomasz Malkowski on kits and hits in 2020 architecture
Kits - Polish architectural criticism infected with tooheism
Something bad has happened to Polish architectural competitions, because... they have stopped rewarding the best architecture in them. Virtually every competition this year has disappointed - though not surprised - me with the selection of awarded objects. I am slowly noticing a certain regularity.
The competition season began with the Architectural Award of "Polityka", the final of the ninth edition was held in early June. Akurat here there was no great surprise - the weekly has accustomed us to awarding grand prix to objects that we forget about immediately after reading the verdict. Did the Municipal Marina in Bydgoszcz designed by APA Rokiccy (winner in 2012) go down in the history of Polish architecture, resonate with some louder echoes in the world? I don't recall. This year we have an object at a similar level. The main prize went to the Home for the Homeless in Jankowice, the work of the XYstudio studio. The pavilion-like building in a small village is a decent architecture - well placed in the context, functional, moreover, created from noble motives. But is it outstanding architecture? The best object of the year? And it's not about the modesty of the means used - those I praise, including the recycled brick used on the facades. It's about the general lack of any signs of excellence, originality, above-average of this building. This is more of an award for the pro-social function of the building - a much-needed function, which is indisputable - but less for the architecture itself.
I would like to provoke the judges of the "Polityka" award to a small exercise in imagination. If XYstudio had built a corporate headquarters in Jankowice in a similar shape and style, would the building have even made it into the competition? And if we went a step further and deliberately disgusted the function of this object, let it be the headquarters of a company that produces fur from animals. Wouldn't the architecture of this building suddenly lose its luster? I am sure that this object without a noble function would be lost in the "Politics" competition. And internationally, even with a strong social message, it has no chance - it will disappear in the flood of much better pro-social architecture. Maybe "Polityka" has forgotten why it holds its contest? Maybe it envied "Newsweek" the Socialist of the Year competition?
The jury's choices are explained by Piotr Sarzynski, editor of "Polityka," who has been writing about architecture in the pages of this newspaper for years. I will quote extensive excerpts from his article "Less is more. We Awarded the Architecture Prize!" published in the weekly just after the competition results were announced, because it seems to me that they are symptomatic of the state of mind of so-called Polish architectural criticism:
In the jury's discussion, Bogna Świątkowska, head of the Bęc Zmiana Foundation, said that the set of finalists says a lot not only about domestic architecture, but also about our society and country. And it's hard not to agree with her. Among the five winners are two buildings that can be considered an emanation of the capitalist power of money: the cosmic design of a single-family residence - the Quadrant House, designed by Robert Konieczny KWK Promes - and the Nowy Targ office building in Wroclaw, which is intimidating in its elegance and proudly flexing in the city space. At the opposite end is this year's winner of the competition - representing the world of the excluded, the poor, the losers - the Home for the Homeless.
Am I the only one who gets a red light when classist nomenclature is injected into the evaluation of works of architecture? And now an exercise in imagination for readers. You are at the jury deliberations as one of the jurors. They present a villa of Konieczny's design - "an emanation of the capitalist power of money" - and you have a House for the Homeless "representing the world of the excluded" as a counterpoint. Who will you vote for? You've practically been morally shackled.
Didn't the red light go on for you? Then perhaps this excerpt from the article will make you realize where Polish architectural criticism is heading: "The designers of the Home for the Homeless have restrained all egotistical ambitions, thanks to which it is difficult to find in this building even the slightest excess of form over content." Isn't that nice? It reads like an article from the Socialist Realist era.
But that's not the end of Sarzynski's argument, it goes on:
It was noticed and appreciated by Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Łatak, winners of our Grand Prix from a year ago, who confronted this investment with projects prepared for... Expo 2020 in Dubai, calling the latter "a display of human vanity" and "an emanation of the attitude of today's Nebuchadnezzars." For them, on the other hand, Yankovice is a facility that stands on the antipodes of those follies, allowing one to "enjoy the better side of the world." And indeed, everything here is subordinated to the overriding goals: economy, modesty, as well as comfortable living, well-being and unobtrusive integration of residents and staff.
I don't know what sense it made to compare the Home for the Homeless with pavilions for an event like the Expo - these are completely different functions, budgets. Expo is an exhibition - there the architecture is required to be impressive, because its purpose is to attract visitors. You won't have visitors, you'll just waste taxpayer money, because you won't achieve your promotional goals. But the Krakow architects used a propaganda ploy to emphasize the nobility of the architecture from XYstudio.
In November, on the other hand, we learned the long-awaited results of the competition Life in Architecture, organized every five years by the editors of the Architektura-Murator monthly. What single-family house turned out to be the best built in Poland in 2015-2019? Is it the Ark, designed by Robert Konieczny, which won such awards around the world as the title of best house in the world of the 2017 Wallpaper Design Awards or The Chicago Athenaeum: International Architecture Award in 2017? No, in Life in Architecture, however, the award went to the House in Bedzin by the design studio jojko+nawrocki architects.
When this house received the Grand Prix and the award in the Single-Family House category in the Architecture of the Year of the Silesian Voivodeship 2018 competition I was happy about these awards, because it is good, rational architecture. On top of that, it's smart, because the building can be adapted to the needs of a family that changes over time by simple means. However, I don't consider this house outstanding or the best in the past five years. I don't think it will conquer the world. And yet, this is also the role of domestic competitions - that of directing the sheen of the spotlight on the most noteworthy object - which is supposed to be a strong sign to foreign critics, jurors, editors of international magazines that we ourselves consider the most valuable in our own backyard.
And although I appreciate the work of Marcin Jojka and Bartłomiej Nawrocki, although I very much enjoyed their speech at the competition "defense" in front of the jury, during which they were supported by the investor Aleksandra Grabowska (by the way, they showed a great architect-investor relationship and mutual understanding and trust, which is the key to success), I do not consider it the best single-family building of the second half of the past decade. But perhaps my disappointment is misplaced? Because, as the jury's verdict states, "the award was given for moderation and modesty in architecture, qualities that encourage, much needed today, a broader reflection on the consequences of ubiquitous consumerism and its negative impact on our planet."
Young architects reading these words - remember especially this passage about modesty and moderation. These are the key words today that will help you win competitions in Poland and become noticed by local critics.
In other categories of Life in Architecture, egalitarianism and socialism also reign supreme. Robert Konieczny snagged the award for the Breakthroughs Dialogue Center in Szczecin, because it's a museum and a square, the site of numerous strikes and protests by city residents, a fact that couldn't escape jurors sensitive to the concerns of all people.
The best multi-family building? Sprzeczna 4, a milestone in the rehabilitation of prefabricated buildings in Poland, was nominated. But it is unfortunately concrete. It had to lose to New Żerniki, where participation and humanistic approach were changed by all cases. The individualistic, original Contradictory 4 had to lose to the spirit of collectivism emanating from the New Żerniki.
The bank was broken by Marlena Wolnik and her studio MWArchitekci with their project for the Local Activity Center in Rybnik. It won a special prize and the title of the realization that best responds to the challenges of the modern world. I like this project - it solves the problem of the lack of a meeting place, especially in peripheral cities or neighborhoods. The building was doomed to success, because there is both an egalitarian function, there is the ubiquitous wood (nowadays the key material for winning competitions, as concrete is on censorship!), and - as the jury emphasized in the verdict:
The design is simple and feasible with modest means in all conditions. Noteworthy is the relatively low cost of implementation and uncomplicated construction.
So we have a ready recipe for success: a modest and simple wooden object, a function - preferably a morally noble one, such as an animal shelter or a single mother's home; there doesn't have to be any expressive idea or overly original form behind the object. It is supposed to be more of a background architecture, fairly average, so as not to frighten domestic critics.
When the results of the architectural competition for the Architectural Award of the President of Warsaw were announced on December 9, 2020, I was not surprised that the grand prix (and several other awards) went to architects from the XYstudio studio for the building of a nursery in Warsaw's Wesoła district. It's obviously a simple and modest block, has the obligatory wood on the facade, and its function is undisputedly socially useful. Building nurseries is the most frequently promised thing in Rafal Trzaskowski's presidential campaign. If there were bookmaker bets, I would bet on XYstudio winning this competition.
I don't want to be misunderstood - I appreciate all the above-mentioned awarded buildings. Many of them are really good architecture. And I am not criticizing the awarded studios here. I am questioning the judges' evaluations and their motives, and above all the criteria they use to evaluate buildings. In them, architecture has receded into the background, if not the third plan. More important is the function, which the architect does not invent. Woe betide you if you design for the rich or big corporations.
I refute in advance the accusations that this is architecture for our times, less iconic, and one in which the problems of ordinary people count. After all, such a paradigm does not preclude the emergence of brilliant architecture. An example is the work of 2016 Pritzker Prize-winning architect Alejandro Aravena. His most famous housing in Chile is low-cost terraced houses, in which each family has a module built and a structure ready for the next one. Users were given the option to expand their homes, and the architect gave the residents a free hand to finish his work. This is not to give people just a fish, but also a fishing rod to catch even more fish. It's to motivate residents to work on their homes. So we have architecture with a strong concept and extremely original.
Like the recent Mies van der Rohe award for the best European realization to the Lacaton & Vassal office for the transformation of five hundred and thirty apartments on the Grand Parc estate in Bordeaux. There, they disenchanted blocks of concrete slabs by adding concrete (!) structures with winter gardens - thus enlarging the living space of each apartment, and at the same time effectively wrapping the old architecture. This is a universal design that can be implemented in most apartment blocks, including those in Poland. Simple and modest, yet visionary and bold. These two projects above have a huge conceptual charge, next to them how bland are our domestic realizations that reigned in the competitions this year.
The questionable choices of domestic critics made me realize that they live in a bubble and are similar to Ellsworth Toohey, one of the key characters in the most famous novel ever dedicated to an architect - Ayn Rand's "The Source." Let me remind you: its main character - Howard Roark - is a brilliant young architect. We learn about his life and his struggle for modern architecture. The stumbling blocks are thrown at his feet by unfavorable critics or colleagues from the big studios, where the main thing is to make money and favor low tastes. The architect's adversary is Toohey himself. In contrast to Roark's individualism, he is an apologist for collectivism and ethical altruism. He abhors the young designer's lavish, original buildings, which he prepares for a wealthy clientele. Toohey fights for egalitarian architecture. However, he is a hypocritical figure, because although he poses as a friend of the people, he actually manipulates public opinion and wants to steer it. For the sake of disguise, he continues to blackmail those around him with morality - he deliberately builds dilemmas on a similar basis to the cited example from the "Polityka" competition: villas of the rich versus houses for the homeless.
This is a very false and harmful point of view. The history of architecture does not distinguish between works built for the rich or the poor. What matters is the quality of architecture. The Villa Tugendhat in Brno, the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or the Villa Savoye in Poissy designed by Le Corbusier - these are icons of modernism, but built for the rich. However, they had a colossal influence on architecture, including social architecture. It's like with fashion. Haute couture creates new trends, invents forms, cuts, experiments, so that in time these inventions can wander into clothes sold in chain stores, and therefore for every pocket.
This year's putty, then, for me, is domestic architectural criticism and its competition choices. People infected with tooheism, who put on the togas of moralists, are leading our architecture on the cusp of low quality. Misunderstood political correctness reigns, and the struggle for the best possible architecture has disappeared from sight.
