The author's conservation doctrine, the involvement of residents and time have shaped a unique establishment in Poland. Elbląg's Old Town is an unusual example of a city rising from the rubble 40 years after its demolition. The search for new forms inspired by the lost heritage, the taming of the ruins and the transformation in the approach to reconstruction is brought closer by the exhibition "Retroversy: to oneself an apartment—to the city an old town."
The exhibition is a joint project of the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning and EL Gallery. Until June 25, in the spaces of the former church, you can learn about both the history of the retroversion and its contemporary artistic reinterpretation. The narrative of the exhibition, prepared by a curatorial team consisting of Zuzanna Mielczarek, Maciej Olewniczak, Emilia Orzechowska, Mateusz Włodarek, is carried out in two directions.
photo by Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU
The first part of the exhibition tells the story of the emergence of the conservation doctrine, proposed in the 1980s by provincial conservationist Prof. Maria Lubocka-Hoffmann. The exhibition features both documentation of the condition of the old city immediately after the war and the first ideas for its development. The unrealized modernist ideas for developing the area broke completely with the historical context. Their authors plotted a vision of a new city center based on the ideas of their contemporary architecture. However, these concepts evolved—this process is evidenced largely by hitherto unpublished archival photographs, documents, drawings, plans or video footage. They show successive versions of the buildings, increasingly tending toward reconstruction rather than new creation.
photo by Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU
The exhibition features original drawings and plans, statements by designers of the time, fragments of historic buildings found during excavations. An interesting exhibit is also Elbląg's certified rubble concrete, the history of which is introduced by the curators. However, while waiting for the reconstruction, nature did not remain passive—the part of the exhibition devoted to ruderal flora, which began to overgrow the ruins of Elbląg, tells about it.
Photo: Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU
The case of Elbląg's retroversy is interesting also for its economic value. In the realities of the housing famine of the 1980s, working directly on the construction site within a small cooperative or housing community proved to be a more efficient and quicker method of obtaining one's own four corners than counting on an allotment from state investments. An additional motivation was the city's policy of transferring ownership of plots of land and architectural designs in exchange for a social deed of assistance in archaeological work and the prospect of restoring Elbląg's urban coherence.
photo by Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU
The story of reconstruction, hitting out at contemporary real estate developers and their critics at the exhibition, has been reinterpreted by the artists and artists invited to collaborate, who have created original installations in reference to the main themes of the exhibition and the tradition of the Elbląg Biennial of Spatial Forms. Artists from all over Poland, creating in a variety of media and experimenting in non-artistic areas, took up such topics as destruction and rebirth, wilderness, rubble, archaeology, modernist visions of reconstruction, retroversy, the spirit of the place, developer buildings and the social archive of the Old Town.
photo by Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Among them appeared, among others, inspired by the form of postmodern tenements, "Welcome to the Future and Past City" by Maciek Cholewa, or "Yesterday's Power” by Filip Rybkowski, referring to architecture as a tool for manifesting power and capital.
Photo: Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU
Aleksander Wadas posed the question—what if it had been modernists who managed to rebuild Elbląg's Old Town. He provided the answer with a mock-up of the "Elbląg Modernist Tenement House," which, although it maintains the proportions of Elbląg tenements, consists only of reinforced concrete columns, ceilings and a lightweight roof truss, referring to modernist building and construction systems, in particular to Corbusier's Dom-ino House.
Photo by Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU
An overlooked theme in the course of the Elbląg controversy—the expansion and rebirth of ruderal vegetation in the ruins of the post-war city—is highlighted in the work of Kasper Jakubowski and Krysia Jędrzejewska-Szmek—"EL Micro Reserve."
photo: Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU
The exhibition can be seen at EL Gallery until June 25. Information on the organizer's website
On June 4, the organizers invite the public to a trip on the Retrobus to the Retroversy. The event includes a ride between Warsaw-Elbląg-Warsaw, a curator tour, a walk with Olga Drenda and free time with Elbląg's spatial forms in the background. Information: facebook
photo: Kuba Rodziewicz / NIAiU
