Poland longs for star-architecture. Lodz misses it. At a time when the Dancing House was being built in Prague at the inspiration of President Václav Havel, and Bilbao was gaining a second life identified by the sculptural architecture of the Guggenheim Museum, only a third-rate Foster and a fourth-rate Libeskind were erected on the Vistula.
Zaha Hadid didn't show up to conjure up rippling office buildings. Rem Koolhaas, who would have shocked with unconventional, thought-provoking and polemical solutions, did not arrive. Even Bjarke Ingels, who with his boyish smile and cheerful architecture would have captivated Poles thirsting for striking buildings, came to Poland too late.
Lodz was particularly thirsty for Great Architecture and Loud Names. After 1989, a city with metropolitan ambitions found itself on the sidelines. The New Center project by Rob Krier (the less capable of the Kriers - as the malicious used to say) was to restore Lodz to its rightful position. There is not much left of the original thought of the Luxembourg architect and urban planner. The concept for the festival center developed by Frank O.Gehry never came to fruition. Likewise the Special Art Zone, the work of Möller Architekten + Ingenieure. And then he finally came along - the son of the Jewish artist and community activist Nachman, born in Lodz on Kilińskiego Street. Daniel Libeskind.
© Studio Libeskind
Let's establish one thing - I like Libeskind. I consider him the creator of one brilliant building (the Berlin Museum). The author of an interesting biography. A man who, together with a group of deconstructivists, put architecture on a completely new track. A designer whose ethical stance raised no major objections.
The Jewish Museum in Berlin, created by Libeskind, carried a powerful message. Deconstruction became the alphabet from which the story of the exodus and extermination of the Jews was constructed. Broken, austere, unsettling forms draw the user into a space that forces reflection and evokes discomfort. The architecture tells a poignant story of the tragic fate of people who lost their lives, their homes, their identities. At the same time, it offers hope.
What does the Nexus 21, visible in the visuals, talk about? I don't know... Is the deconstructivist, broken form a symbol of the city's decline with the closing of the textile mills after 1989? Is its reintegration, in turn, a modern renaissance of Lodz identified by the halls of logistics centers alluded to by the shell of metal panels? I don't know...
il. Błażej Ciarkowski
Maybe a deconstructivist bomb thrown into the middle of the 19th century urban fabric is not such a bad idea after all. How many times in history has an architectural provocation forced deep reflection and revision of established views! Except that Nexus 21 is not a bomb. It does not provoke reflection and in-depth discussion that will go beyond an online "hit or miss" poll. Sometimes it is better to be silent," wrote Polish architects in the early 1980s. Polish contemporary space does not like silence. Silence is unimpressive. You can't brag about it on social media. It looks bad on colorful visuals. You can't hang a plaque on it telling about the costs incurred and the funders. Our architecture cannot be silent - it must speak loud and clear, it must shout.
The Nexus could have been a monument to Lodz's transformation. Then a steel block should have been thrown into the middle of one of the unrenovated quarters on East Street. Let the steel-and-glass lump crush the coal-furnace-heated commons in the annexes! Let the building's sharp prow pierce the fungus-covered and peeling plaster walls! Let it be the iron fist of the finance minister announcing the great leap into capitalism! Let it be the story of those who landed on the cobblestones by the thousands, stood in welfare lines, or drank themselves into the gates in despair. The Nexus could have been a monument to them all....
il. Blazej Ciarkowski
Meanwhile, Libeskind's work crouched on the edge of the revitalized quarter. It huddled its shiny, metallic calf, friendly hugging the renovated 19th-century rentals. "Look!" - it says, "Behold Lodz! The Promised Land! A world of many cultures where tradition harmoniously blends with modernity."
"Multicultural Lodz" is a slogan equally worn out and meaningless. So is "Promised Land." For what is it supposed to mean in 2021? That suddenly descendants of the Kindermanns, Poznański, Muller and Rozencwajg families will appear on Wschodnia and Jaracza? Or that the iconic building will integrate the contemporary cultures of Lodz? The sloping walls will shelter teenage consumers of cheap drugs, authors of vulgar inscriptions on the walls, unruly artists, academics, pensioners, civil servants... everyone? It's a beautiful vision, but completely unrealistic. No one has asked the residents of the surrounding quarters "What do you want? What do you need to make life better, more pleasant?". Instead, an arbitrary decision was made and a gift was prepared in the form of a new Architecture Center.
And modernity? If we assume that it is an attempt to find answers to the challenges and problems of modernity then... the Libeskind project is not modern. It is turn-of-the-century architecture, the golden age of star-architecture. It is an icon that will never be an icon, for their time has passed irretrievably. It represents an expensive decoration that has not only gone out of fashion, but can seem downright inappropriate.
il. Błażej Ciarkowski
Why are we creating a building whose creation does not stem directly from the vital needs of a troubled city? Why do we bring to life an entity whose main sense of existence is the name of its creator? In recent years we have had a number of opportunities to combine more or less useful activities with the satisfaction of our ambitions. Why wasn't the Łódź Fabryczna station designed by Santiago Calatrava? Why wasn't the Orientarium entrusted to Bjarke Ingels and the BIG studio? Or... the halls on the Green Square could have been done by the Miralles Tagliabue EMBT office?
All the considerations of "what if..." however, do not bring us any closer to solving the problem. Here and now the vision of the Libeskind building is slowly beginning to materialize... The foundations, however, are not poured. The building permit has not been issued. There is time to take a step back! Do you want good, contemporary architecture? Invite this year's Pritzker winners, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, who have proven time and again that they can find solutions to difficult architectural and social issues. No, then how about young Polish designers? Let them build their own history. Let them show that modernity is not a building-monument, but sensitivity to people, their problems and the space they live in.
