Today I would like to very warmly encourage you that together we consider the eminently elegant problem of ugliness in our cities, which is very often due to the ground floors of buildings. Although, as you will see in the course, I intend to enlist you in this way for ideological indoctrination under the guise of innocent visual cachet and architectural musings.
But let's perhaps start a little differently. What is elegance in general? My grandmother used to say that an elegant man is known by how neat his shoes are. Not necessarily by whether they are expensive, but whether they are clean, polished and matched to the outfit. I am of the opinion that it is the same with buildings in the city. A true architectural gentleman will be recognized not by whether he has a large, imposing volume framed by an expensive facade jacket and a gold chain around his neck. Nor does he necessarily need to have a six-pack of perfect glass facades or be stuffed with expensive, fashionable gadgets. We'll know it by a detail, by whether it has neat shoes. For townhouses and other buildings, they are the ground floor. Well, and I will tell you frankly that, unfortunately, it is crumbly and miserable with them in our country. I get the impression that we have stopped understanding the rules of this architectural savoir-vivre. When I look at the shouting and advertising-laden storefronts with the cheapest woodwork color-matched by daltonists, I think to myself that wearing socks to sandals by buildings has become a widely accepted fashion in our cities.
Włocławek Old Town
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
Why do I mention this? Well, because I was going to take you on a fascinating journey to a small town that, despite its considerable surviving decline, has preserved from the old days a remarkable number of true architectural gentlemen's houses with old storefronts. That's right. I was going to. And so I will, but I must warn you that returning to this city years later, I experienced great disappointment.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the clou of our trip—Włocławek. I won't even pretend that when I first visited this city a dozen years ago, it somehow particularly delighted me. On the contrary, it gave a depressing impression of decay and destruction, which its authorities are trying to deal with by adding more concrete, asphalt and flashy postmodernism to this bigotry. Perhaps the most conspicuous evidence of the lack of an idea to break out of this situation was the concreting of the Old Market. In fact, it became the first such prominent and well-known example of concreting squares in Poland. Although this is not what I intend to focus on today, it is not out of place not to mention it. The fact that we don't stigmatize Włocławek for this on a daily basis is only due to the fact that back in 2016 the city declared that it would make changes to this space and introduce more greenery. I have since let it go. I even happened to refer to this fact, showing Włocławek as a positive example in the style of "Look, they went astray, but they understood, it's time for you (insert name of any locality brought under the burden of EU funds)."
Włocławek Stare Miasto
Photo: Pawel Mrozek
I waited and waited for this market to be deconstructed. Years passed, until someone finally told me that this is what is already visible. I don't know why I missed it. After all, there were a few bushes and even more concrete. Folks, are there some revitalization tables I don't know, which dictate that for every cubic meter of greenery an additional eight cubic meters of concrete should be made, or what's the point, because I don't understand. But rest assured, we have a plan. In 2022 the authorities of Włocławek decided to rebuild the Old Market for the third time, and this time, from what I understand, there will finally be some, hopefully this time non-symbolic greening. Such that we won't have to look for it again with a magnifying glass.
We need to go deeper
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
What I can say. I appreciate the will to fight of the authorities of Włocławek, even if it all goes with great effort. However, it is important to know, before what we are about to see, that the authorities of this city have the persistence to achieve their goals, apparently. Despite the fact that what I found made me feel pessimistic, without losing my spirit, I set out to find what interested me. I won't quote here all the thoughts I had while penetrating the city, as their literal translation would risk having my content's monetization levels lowered by Google's algorithms. Fortunately, what I cannot convey in words, I can convey to you in the form of aggressive, drastic visual content, which—thanks to human indifference to beauty and ugliness—censorship does not apply to. What is left of the city that I remembered in the form of dozens of unique historic storefronts in the Old Town, which were already crying out for renovation years ago, is a conflagration of destruction. It resonated only in memory, in places where I still remembered that a tenement stood, or the wall itself with its extremely charming carved woodwork and ironwork.
Włocławek Old Town
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
Włocławek Old Town
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
What was left of the charm of the city, which already appeared to me only as a shadow of a former center of commerce, were shavings. Single wrecks of extremely rich storefronts, which with their wealth far surpassed cities of similar class before the war. Window displays that rivaled such centers as Łódz or Warszawa in their grandeur.
Włocławek Old Town
Photo: Pawel Mrozek
Włocławek Old Town
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
I will say frankly that I would be better off with ignorance of what the city has lost through its neglect. Leszno, which I praise, or Chełmno, which I criticize, never even had the opportunity to dream of the prosperity that Włocławek must have experienced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On the other hand, for example, devastated Łódź, which had this kind of heritage in the past on an industrial scale, because it had a million times more of it, has still preserved so many high-end storefronts in and around Piotrkowska Street that we don't even feel a great loss. Włocławek, on the other hand, had an extraordinary capital of beautiful ground-floor tenement houses, which it squandered and almost all of it sent on a journey to destruction.
Włocławek Old Town
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
Włocławek Old Town
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
What has survived is now only a shadow, a guess that there was something in a particular place. Or sometimes even a hole from the buildings that once stood there. A real annihilation of storefronts and urban economic activity, entire architectural structures that for decades no one even tried to stop from falling apart. And even that was applauded, as the death of a naive, unfashionable form of activity from times gone by. And I'm not just saying this as a visitor and outsider who travels around and likes to criticize, but as someone who has family in this city and has returned to it many times. One who understands this life, sees the indifference and helplessness of its residents to the processes that devastate its space.
Włocławek Old Town
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
Włocławek Old Town
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
What's more, I have proof that the subject of storefronts is not just my delusion. That the city authorities are aware that this is an important topic, although in my opinion it has long been lost. After all, for years Włocławek has been running a program aimed at entrepreneurs, with no analogues in the mira, aimed at improving the aesthetics of storefronts. It bears the caressing name "Site+". No. I'm not messing around.
Włocławek Old Town
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
Such a thing really exists in Włocławek. Based on a mere inspection of the state of public spaces in this city, I will admit to you with my hand on my heart that I am not entirely sure I see its effects, however. Maybe it is, maybe not? It's hard to tell. The fact that some of the new storefronts seem a little better than the random grandfathering that shopkeepers have loved to create of their own accord, spontaneously in disdain and ignorance of the character of the facade. Nor, by the way, is there any information on the authority's website telling which sites are beneficiaries of the program, any plebiscite for the best new site, or any will to promote good models. This is a pity, because it could have a very desirable effect, unleashing positive competition among merchants under the guidance and patronage of the city.
Włocławek Old Town
Photo: Pawel Mrozek
Włocławek Stare Miasto
Photo: Pawel Mrozek
In fact, it's not just about Włocławek. This city has only become a catalyst of anger for me as I unsuccessfully searched years later for places that once delighted me while filling me with concern. It's about our whole sick country, which completely fails to appreciate the value it has. It burns it—figuratively and probably also in the case of these sites literally—in ovens, because let's not kid ourselves, that's exactly how most of the historic beauty of this city and many others ended up.
The pre-war model of commerce and the pictures of the time clearly prove that we are now aesthetic barbarians. It used to be that the quality of the storefront and display was a magnet to attract customers. Attention to detail, to what lay on display built the store's brand. Today, a store's display is eye-catching designs on foil obscuring the truth that behind the glass are the guts of a refrigerator or, at best, a clapboard-plastic woodwork that is the stage for a spectacle titled a free roll-up of a manufacturer of some product range or service. High-budget commerce has moved to shopping malls and the Internet, and it's mostly the poor who put on their shows in this street theater.
Why is this so? Why have we, as humanity, stopped caring completely about the appearance of this most essential part of architecture? The one that we have at eye level, that we can touch and that for centuries has been an art in itself? I think I know the answer to this question.
The problem does not lie with one authority or another, although these authorities can both help and hurt. Even the changes that have taken place in trade are not the determining factor. This is not an excuse to suddenly stop caring about the architecture and beauty of our public spaces. Lack of resources means degradation, too many resources means a garish cacophony of kitsch. No matter how we slide that zipper between one and the other, what comes out from under our hands is futility, and the roots of this problem go much deeper, in my opinion.
Gdansk-Wrzeszcz, an example of tenements that put socks to sandals.
Photo by Pawel Mrozek
The culprit,in my opinion, is modernism, which has completely penetrated us morally and ideologically. Modernism, which based its criticism precisely on the facade of the existing architecture, on cheap ornamentation, which in fact in the days before it was of poor quality, grinding over and over again, in a generic way, the trite motifs that are already worse and worse photocopies of past styles. And that's OK. I completely understand why the modernists felt tired of it and decided to reject it all. They proposed a radically different approach to architecture, in which the individual building elements themselves no longer formed random and generic clusters of details, but everything from start to finish was dictated by the aesthetics of functionality. It revealed its beauty as a whole work of art, which was the building. And this worked brilliantly at first, bringing a breath of fresh air to cities experiencing a development boom in every field. This is how many magnificent buildings were created in Gdynia, Katowice or other Polish cities, which delight us with their delicate, functional simplicity.
Hurray. This is how the multi-layered artistic metavalues in architecture were murdered. From this point in history, the chief architect became the sole lord and master responsible for every aspect of his work, and it became a dishonor for an architect to fail to carry this responsibility. Suddenly, in the ideal image of architecture, stimulated in addition by the handful of architectural geniuses of the era, it became a fetish and a duty of the architect to design every detail—from the facade to the doorknobs in the toilets. And all in a minimalist, industrial style. I hope you understand what I am getting at. How long could an architect, within the number of architectural canons increasingly narrowed by industrialization of production, and with increased responsibility for the overall work, pretend that he could still create something original.
Meanwhile, not every building in design requires a modernist approach. When creating a tenement that fills just a section in the frontage and at the same time plays a key role for the urbanism of the street, no one really cares what the wall from the courtyard will look like and whether it will represent ideological unity with the front. Because no one will ever be able to perceive with their perception this building like a mock-up isolated specifically for some exhibition. And the greatest fault of modernism is that although it bankrupted postmodernism, no one ever revoked such an approach to design. No one has negated the role of the architect as the creator of the entire composition from start to finish. Although, with the increased complication of postmodernism that came later, such a role in the case of ordinary utilitarian buildings has completely outgrown architects. To make matters worse, no one revoked the modernist disdain for the architecture of bygone eras, which is precisely what, among other things, resulted in barbaric intrusions into their architectural content with details and aesthetics characteristic of modernism. Despite the fact that this was blatantly against its principles of aesthetic coherence of the whole composition.
Gdansk, the mural or outstanding architectural painting relegated to the role of a filler of unwanted spaces with which we do not know what to do.
Pawel Mrozek
And this is exactly the problem I have with modernism. It's not a problem with its outstanding works, which we adore and admire, but with its ideological legacy of not understanding context, with the mannerism of ideological waste that it has spread throughout the rest of our space. We have also flattened the multidimensionality of artistic architecture to the role of a single artist and master, something that makes sense and applies to perhaps a few percent of the objects we create as humanity, where stardom adds spice. But for the same reason, today we struggle to find a place and role for mural art or for the independent aesthetic of signs created by individual artists. Not even talking about entire storefronts or other details of buildings that could change over the course of its life, as has always been the case. Historically, as part of architecture, each of these elements was created by a number of craftsmen, sculptors, painters, architects and other artists. Their job was to get along aesthetically in all of this, and the evolutionary process that shaped this meant they were able to do so.
Meanwhile, let's look at the average new urban block and answer the question of whether it's better because of it. It used to be that architectural expression was engaging our senses, because it was the result of a dialogue between different temperaments that worked for a common effect, today this dialogue is no longer a dialogue but a battle of the architect versus the rest of the world. And this is how, among other things, excellent storefronts were born in the process. Sometimes, moreover, long after the building itself had been constructed, only at the level of finding a tenant for the premises, when the chief architect was already completely elsewhere, and the craftsmen who made the facade were already sitting on completely different scaffolding. Such architecture was flexible. It could easily evolve without demolishing the entire character of the building, and its individual elements could be read both as part of the whole and completely separately as works of art. And modernism? All it takes is for someone to disturb a balcony and the whole block looks like a pile. Another will replace one window and you can gouge out your eyes. With modernism we discovered a new aesthetic, well, and that's cool, but we exploited it rather quickly, unfortunately. We made it possible for the world to progress cheaply, but in terms of the development of a field such as architecture, we have to tell ourselves straight—in some areas we have taken a step backwards, which we don't know how to get out of and to which we can't admit, well, because how would we, modern people, make mistakes? We are never wrong, it is the past that is always wrong. „Oh boy.” Didn't anyone think about the fact that new people will come after us and say the same thing?
Bucharest Romania
Pawel Mrozek
We can't anticipate changing fashions, and yet we create architecture that doesn't flexibly embrace change and can't adapt aesthetically to a changing world over the course of its life. And the worst sin of all is that, convinced of our own infallibility and the rightness of this approach, we radiate destructively to the architecture that came before, treating it simply rudely. We have unreflectively replaced the elegant man with neat shoes with a worker in overalls and work shoes. Let me emphasize again, I am not talking about the outstanding works of modern architecture, of which we are creating more than in the entire history of mankind before us. I'm talking about everyday architecture, of which we create a thousand times more than in the entire history of mankind of anything, and which is simply meant to serve us and doesn't require pretending that the architect has to make his mark in it, or even that he has to be the main conductor here, upholding his vision for all time, because that can't be enforced and... note I'm going to reveal a big secret now... because no one cares. Worse, people intuitively feel that architects are not in control of their realizations. That this architectural gentleman is a loser in real life. This ends up with examples in which in a relatively new development someone makes a restaurant like „Polska Karczma” or some other „Swojskie Jadło” in the first floor, and on the façade in the first floor of a glass building grows a thatched roof and a thatched roof crap parody of a country cottage. Such efflorescences of joyful creative thought are the result of creating architecture that does not encourage the user to respect it. And since there is much more contemporary architecture than there was before it, we are developing architectural anarchy and barbarism on top of this de facto aesthetic interregnum, which is becoming the new norm.
I have an appeal to architects. Let's stop pretending that we know everything best and are in control of everything, while taking handfuls of off-the-shelf aesthetics from „Castorama.” We need an architecture that can age and take on historical accretions, not just one that breaks down and is discarded. The space of cities that used to record our history has become some kind of blotter in which to chalk, smear and tear out pages. It is necessary to restore the multi-layered artistic work that is architecture, in which at different levels different artists will be able to co-create its character. We have new technologies that enable us to do extraordinary things. When we understand this, we will finally find the true place of contemporary architecture in its context, and the context will also finally breathe a sigh of relief. I for one do not expect any revolutions here. Revolutions are stupid on principle. What we need is a wise evolution of architectural thought.
I will leave you with a thought that struck me in the last year. Its author is Danish architect Mieke Bosse:
Tradition is the sum of all successful innovations.
