Ideal City employs instrumentallythe phenomenon of Nowa Huta (Poland), a town imagined and made concrete from above, as a holistic urbanistic and social experiment, aimed at outlining prospective scenarios for the evolution of the concept of city. This time developed at grass-roots level by the community laying down its rules.
The case of Nowa Huta is altogether exceptional because the experimental concept of the city created for the purposes of social engineering accumulates an infinite number of previous urban scenarios, universalising in this way the experience of city in the broad sense.
The experience of Nowa Huta’s unfinished utopia goes along with an equally multilayeredvisual archive. Although it only has two authors [Wiktor Pental (1920–2013) and Henryk Makarewicz (1917–1984)], their photographic practices occurred on diverse planes, thus representing a number of simultaneous policies on working with the image. As a consequence, the mutually complementary and discursive character of specific narratives or single images constituting the collection makes it a perfect instrumentarium to be used in the investigation process of what the city is today or may be in future.
Therefore, Ideal City juxtaposes two experiences: a city designed from scratch—a laboratory not only in urbanist and architectural but chiefly in social terms, and its representation. Apparently a coherent whole, it is still based on a number of a number of overlapping views: strictly documentary, humanistic, propagandist, private, more or less directly involved in the sphere of art, frequently constituting afterimages of concurrent visual trends. Deconstruction of such multilayered and equivocal collection of photographs dedicated to the city, a product of intersecting views from above, private convictions and synchronic aesthetic regimes, gives rise to a laboratory where prospective scenarios for how the concept of city may evolve are drawn, but this time from the grassroots perspective.
Ideal City is an open proposition, and merely a leaven for a broader progressing discourse. Bordering on a display or a publication at first, it provides a platform for further research offering a living repository for interested researchers/artists to delve into within the framework of the website/exhibition, and suggest new ways of interpretation.
Curator: Łukasz Trzciński
Authors: Agata Cukierska, Dorota Jędruch, Marta Karpińska, Dorota Leśniak-Rychlak, Szymon Maliborski, Ewa Rossal, Stanisław Ruksza, Katarzyna Trzeciak, Magdalena Ujma, Michał Wiśniewski
Supporting voices: Christophe Alix, Piotr Bujak, Łukasz Błażejewski, EBANO collective, Nina Fiocco, Tomasz Fudala, Marek Janczyk, Kacper Kępiński, Paweł Kruk, Yan Kurz, Piotr Lisowski, Lukáš Machalický, Krzysztof Maniak, Tomáš Moravec, Wojciech Nowicki, Jan Pfeiffer, Agnieszka Piksa&Vladimir Palibrk, Aleka Polis, Tomasz Rakowski, Dominik Stanisławski, Stach Szumski, Yan Tomaszewski, Matej Vakula, Jaro Varga, Aleksandra Wasilkowska, Paweł Wątroba, Rafał Woś, Julita Wójcik, Ewa Zarzycka
Production: Imago Mundi Foundation in partnership with The Museum of Photography in Kraków
Young Worker Home (Dom Młodego Rolnika, DMR) on the A-11 (Stalowe) Estate, a monumental building that served as a bunkhouse for young men from 1951. Located at the end of the Stalowe Estate, it formed together with the Technical School of Mechanical Engineering on the Szkolne Estate so-called Nowa Huta Gate (Brama Nowej Huty). The E-shaped building has two separate courtyards. Entrances have the form of porticos crowned with a stone balustrade of a protruding balcony, accentuated with French windows. The building houses a gym and a hall (ball room) meant for cultural events and entertainment, it is also where party meeting took place. Inside, there is a monumental staircase, geometric flooring and three underground shelters. More than a hectare of park surrounds it. The A-11 Estate was supervised by architect Zbigniew Olszakowski, individual objects were executed in collaboration with Zbigniew Sierdzaki. 1950s.
Dom Młodego Robotnika (DMR) na osiedlu A-11 (Stalowym), monumentalny budynek będący od 1951 roku hotelem robotniczym dla młodych mężczyzn. Położony na skraju os. Stalowego, tworzy wraz z Zespołem Szkół Mechanicznych na os. Szkolnym tzw. „Bramę Nowej Huty”. Sam obiekt kształtowany jest „grzebieniowo” (litera „E”), tworząc dwa wewnętrzne dziedzińce. Wejścia do budynku mają formę portyku, który wieńczy kamienna balustrada wydatnego balkonu, akcentowanego oknami typu porte-fenetre. W jego obrębie znajduje się sala gimnastyczna i rodzaj auli (sali balowej), przeznaczonej także na imprezy kulturalno-rozrywkowe. gdzie odbywały się również zebrania partyjne. Wewnątrz znajduje się monumentalna klatka schodowa, posadzki z geometrycznymi wzorami oraz trzy podziemne schrony. Całość otoczona jest ponad hektarowym parkiem. Architektoniczny nadzór autorski nad osiedlem A-11 pełnił inż. arch. Zbigniew Olszakowski, przy poszczególnych obiektach współpracował z nim inż. arch. Zbigniew Sieradzki. Lata 50.
Photo by Wiktor Pental/idealcity.pl
Miejsce
Nowa Huta
Czas
4 April 1955
Tagi
Brama Nowej Huty,
Nowa Huta Gate,
Osiedle Stalowe,
Stalowe Estate