An exhibition devoted to the achievements of Zbigniew Karpinski, the designer of the capital's central urban planning foundation, the Eastern Wall, is underway at the Zodiac Warsaw Architecture Pavilion. This is one of the rare occasions when the city recalls the figure of an important architect.
A view of the Downtown Department Stores and the Eastern Wall's punctual buildings
From the collection of the National Digital Archive
The debate on architecture in Poland is still largely based on effect (the big, spectacular edifices are most readily discussed, with little attention paid to the everyday, "ordinary" architectural fabric of which cities are composed), or it stems from complexes - which is why we are so fond of foreign architects who design something on the Vistula, and why the average foreign designer is held in higher esteem than a very good but Polish one. There is still more excitement and interest in similar new skyscrapers or even shopping malls, rather than in those buildings that were built decades ago that shaped the space and flowed into how we use it today.
Do we know how to appreciate the memory of architects?
Evidence in support of this thesis is the "discovery" of the figure of Zbigniew Karpinski, the main designer of the Eastern Wall, the most important urban planning assumption of the capital's Downtown, a real counterweight to the edifice of the Palace of Culture and Science, a complex that constitutes the real center of Warsaw. The exhibition presenting the achievements of this architect, which opened on October 24, is important and necessary, but it is difficult not to see it as a swan song - after all, the assumption of the Eastern Wall in the form designed by Karpinski no longer exists, most of its components have either been rebuilt or even replaced by new objects. We began to talk properly about how interesting and perfectly designed it was only when it began to disappear.
The Eastern Wall, September 2019.
Photo: Anna Cymer
The exhibition, although closed to the public for the time being due to the pandemic, is available in the form of an online guide, and is also accompanied by a very interesting program of lectures and debates (all events, available without leaving home, will be held until the end of December). It brings closer not only the modern establishment of the Eastern Wall, but also Karpinski's other realizations, including pre-war ones, such as the 1936 edifice of the District Court in Gdynia. On the occasion of the exhibition, however, it is hard not to think about whether we know how to appreciate the memory of the architects who built our cities? Are they honored in any way in the places they designed?
In the Eastern Wall complex it is difficult to find, even a tiny plaque, indicating who designed this important and still massively used development complex. But wouldn't such a gesture be worthwhile? It is not a question of signing all the buildings in the city, but marking the authorship of those most important, most strongly influencing the space of the city would be valuable for both residents and visitors.
Monuments and busts
Quite recently, in the summer of this year, a place was found in Muranów to commemorate the architect of this unusual housing estate-monument, a place to live on the ruins of a murdered neighborhood, a realization in the spirit of modernist, but created in the era of socialist realism. Bohdan Lachert, although he created not only this estate with a multi-layered history and multi-layered ideas, but also many other capital buildings, and was a very important figure in the pre-war avant-garde movement, was not commemorated in the city space.
© bpwola
Unlike his co-worker, with whom he formed an authorial duo in the 1920s and 1930s - Joseph Shanation, who has long been the patron of one of the streets. Why the disparity? Does it have to do with the fact that Szanajca died during World War II, while Lachert went from being an avant-gardist to becoming an important architect of the new system, the author not only of Muranów, but also of the Mausoleum of Soviet Soldiers (incidentally, one of the most beautiful monumental structures, monumental in its simplicity)? Anyway, on the occasion of preparations for naming a square in Muranów after Bohdan Lachert in June 2020, there were still voices claiming that the "communist" architect was not worthy of the honor.
The monument to Stanislaw Jankowski "Agaton"
Photo: Anna Cymer
Surprising ways wander the criticism of architects (because not architectural). In some circles, the erection of a monument to Stanislaw Jankowski "Agathon" in Warsaw (unveiled on August 1, 2020) has also caused disgust. Right-wing columnists, because it was from their side that the outrage could be heard, do not deal with biographies, albeit a bit more complicated - in Jankowski's case, his design work in the 1940s and 1950s was considered a transgression so great that it offset his heroic war record. They considered his co-design of the W-Z Route and the Marszalkowska Housing District (no matter how valuable and important these buildings are in Warsaw today) disqualifying. It didn't even help that the originator, investor and implementer of the monument was the Warsaw Uprising Heroes Remembrance Foundation, so the reason for its construction should be considered primarily the architect's merits during World War II. However, there is no denying that the monument to Jankowski, designed by Antoni Janusz Pastwa, is one of two monuments I know of dedicated to the architect. The other is a bust of Jozef Szanajca, located on the street of the same. You can find commemorative plaques in the city, but monuments to architects, there seem to be no more.
The monument to Jozef Szanajca
photo: Gastrograf
Street names in Nowe Żerniki
It's also hard not to recall a story from Wroclaw in this context, in which when streets in the New Żerniki neighborhood were to be named after architects important to the city, a ruckus rose from the right, because some of them were German architects. "Gratitude or pro-German propaganda?", "Wroclaw German again?" - right-wing journalists, apparently lacking elementary historical knowledge, asked with concern. I wonder if they filed appeals against UNESCO's decision when Centennial Hall was inscribed on the World Heritage List. One of the streets in New Żerniki is now named after its architect, Max Berg.
do they have to be monuments?
Jan Zachwatowicz, a key figure in the history of Warsaw's reconstruction, and patron of the so-called Międzymurza, a pedestrian route between the inner and outer rings of the Old Town walls, is soon to have his own monument in the capital. Just do we need monuments the most to dignify the memory of those who designed our city? Several architects patronize Warsaw streets - in the housing estate near the Wilanów Palace you can find Marconich, Jakub Kubicki, Franciszek Maria Lanci streets, the street running along the wall of the Warsaw University of Technology is named after Stanislaw Noakowski, in Rakowiec there is a square named after the main designer of the post-war part of this housing estate, Zaslaw Malicki. These are legitimate and logical places; it is a pity, however, that it was not possible to "squeeze" Barbara and Stanislaw Brukalski, authors of the extremely important for the development of Polish architecture estate blocks of the Warsaw Housing Cooperative and theextremely avant-garde villa of their own architects, that it was impossible to honor Helena and Szymon Surkus in housing estates in Rakowiec, Praga or Koło, that Halina Skibniewska does not have her own bust, square, or alley in Sady Żoliborskie or at Szwoleżerów (or maybe the problem is "communism" again? after all, the architect was even a deputy speaker of the communist Polish parliament!).
We have plenty of monuments in Warsaw (and still more are being erected), but there are many more forms of commemorating important figures in a given place. Architects and urban planners uniquely deserve it, because the memory of them still belongs to a handful of specialists and enthusiasts, despite the fact that it is the work of these designers that affects the lives of really all users of the city. Perhaps it is worth commemorating them if only to see who to hold possible grudges against? And in an era of climate disaster, even single trees named after a significant personage seem to be an interesting form of commemoration. Let's put a small plaque next to one of them, with information that this estate, this seat of government, theater or museum was designed by such and such an architect. Admittedly, the Eastern Wall lacks trees, but there would also be a place to honor the author of this design. He especially deserves it.
