a column by Jakub Glaz from issue 7/8 of A&B
Unclear laws, inconsistent regulations, poor plans, stupid politicians. One can no longer listen to the whining of Polish architects. They don't want to see that everything serves something. What is the purpose here? Not to let design brains rot.
Of recipes, Poles hold the culinary ones in the highest regard. In general, cooking has grown into a nation-unifying cult, with a Manichean division between the diabolical Gessler and the saintly Makłowicz. If we attached as much importance to other matters as we do to the scrumptiousness, if, for example, we adhered with equal reverence to the spirit of laws and ordinances in urban planning, we would probably pass out from boredom. Fortunately, we are not dull cooks of our own fate. We are virtuosos. Every day we fight for the golden pan of legislation, frying up regulations the world has never seen.
All in order to later exercise our brains in interpreting or circumventing the legal ciphers that politicians in the Wiejskaya are sticking to. For although in the bygone era before PiS, the previous party in power tempted with slogans "Let's not do politics. Let's build Poland/roads/bridges/schools," building on a larger scale is always politics. But the Platform knew otherwise and - what a decent party! - kept its word. Politics, in the proper sense of the word, it did not do. "Let them go to the doctor," it advised amateurs of any vision for the future. And it built - as it promised - without a political strategy. Until the kickball championship, she still took the short-term azimuth of stadiums, roads and pendolines. Then she threw away the compass. Successors seemingly different, but basically one dog.
Because fortunately, neither the Platform nor PiS violated the status quo forcing constant mental effort. Yes, already before 2015 an attack on the current system was being prepared. On the horizon loomed the specter of the urban-architectural code, which, under the current government, greeted the parliamentary goose. But it did not reach the session hall. Instead, deus ex machina, the "lex developer" popped up, enriching the collection of puzzles that will keep brains from rotting.
Thanks to these enigmas, not only do the coils ripple, but the heart grows as one follows the online discussions of architects from all over the country. Questions, doubts, wonderings, intellectual ferment. Fresh recipes are the best. No one knows anything. What has been accepted in one county is heresy in another. Here an official will delete, there he will add, somewhere else he will order an addition. The brain is constantly in standby mode to guess what this or that paragraph also means. And even that fails, because the quality of building regulations is many lengths ahead of advances in computer science. Quantum computers are crawling, and we already have quantum laws and regulations. The effect of observation depends on the observer. Until the last minute, until the official discovers what is hidden under this or that article, there is no telling what it will mean. Maybe this, or maybe the opposite of that. Schrödinger's Recipe.
Scratching the folds of the brain is also fostered by contact with the product of local politics - local plans. Very diverse here. A land of fantasy. As if it were a festival for the most peculiar documentary. Not only are the records moving, which not infrequently allow the erection of houses for a population several times the size of the municipality's population. The drawings are good, too. Even bordering plans can surprise with their different means of artistic expression and their detail. Original combinations of shraphs, surprising markings, colorful surprises and games like "strain your eyes."
Even more stimulating to the brain are non-existent plans. Don't. There is no mistake here. Politically speaking, the plans that don't exist are a fascinating puzzle. Almost an investigation. Why haven't they been triggered? Who does it serve? And - how much will be saved from it. Because how space is planned is often decided by a mysterious profiteer who counts the potential losses of the local government associated with the enactment of the plan. Hence the Polish innovation: plans for the past - yes, called for, but enacted when everyone has already built after the development conditions - without crying out for money from the municipality. You just have to wait and stick to what you've grown.
You can see that plans that don't exist are like the dragons of probability from Lem's "Tales of the Robots." They don't exist in many ways. There are unconceived plans and conceived but still unborn plans. The latter, brought forth many years ago, are sometimes only a promise, a hovering spirit that somewhere, someday, perhaps will materialize. It's no coincidence that Kazik Staszewski, in a clip of a new song, was recently on his knees offering prayers to the Bialoleka District Office. The spirit must be propitiated when a plan, as in Bialoleka, has been in the making for thirteen years. Polish planning is thus not only an exercise for the brain, but also a muse for artists. Perhaps after the raps about (C)HWDP, the MPZP song current is born? There will be no shortage of topics. In Poznan, there are plans conceived more than fifteen years ago, and there is no end in sight.
However, not everyone wants to appreciate this legal stimulation of minds. Then they shout "deregulation". Because, as you know, when the mechanism works like this, it needs to be deregulated even more. Arguably, upon hearing the news of the houses without permits announced in the New or Polish Deal, the hands of liberal deregulators dived under the comforter. Instead, the hands of other politicians have not reached for regulatory solutions that could be given a more workable, statutory character. For example, to the "Polish Architectural Policy," edited by Krzysztof Chwalibog, which hangs for itself (and policymakers) on the website of the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning. There is also no shortage of other studies - from scholarly works to studies of urban movements, which, together with "Polish Politics..." NIAiU could present to politicians as a deeply considered proposal from an environment tired of solving legal and systemic puzzles.
For now, however, there is no hope. Maybe it's boring? Maybe a crazy show is needed? Then the Pole will get interested. "Spatial revolutions" and someone to the measure of the diabolical Gessler. She will go such or such through the Sejm and ministries, document shredder in one hand, megaphone in the other and - riding with MPs. "What kind of pate are you voting on here?", "Take these laws out of the freezer for me!", "I wouldn't even pass this to my mother-in-law". And then in local government: "How much have you been mulling over these plans? Do you want to finish people off?"
And finally, in kind: "Study srudium!".
