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
An aerial photograph depicting buildings in Zone B. In the foreground: a square on the Szklane Domy (B-32) Estate, including the modernist Swedish Block designed by Janusz and Marta Ingarden in 1956, built in 1957-9. No bricks were used to build it; instead it was constructed from Siporex cellular concrete (under licence from Sweden). This method allowed the construction of loggias, closely spaced windows and balconies. Coloured plaster was used on elevations, which was a rare practice at the time. The building was 260m long, and held 272 modern, functional flats; the ground floor housed a variety of shops (a mechanic shop, a haberdashery, a chemist, and a seed and veg shop). Interior design by Irena Pać-Zaleśna, Zdzisław Szpyrkowski and Kazimierz Syrek. Behind the Swedish Block are residential buildings and public facilities on the Słoneczne (B-33), Zielone (B-2 Południe) and, on the right, Szkolne (B-1) Estates. Early 1960s.
Fotografia lotnicza przedstawiająca zabudowę osiedli w strefie B. Na pierwszym planie plac na osiedlu Szklane Domy (B-32) z modernistycznym Blokiem Szwedzkim. Zaprojektowany został przez Janusza i Martę Ingardenów w 1956 roku, budowany w latach 1957-1959. Przy jego budowy nie używano cegieł, ale betonu komórkowego (na licencji szwedzkiej) Siporex. Pozwoliło to na zbudowanie loggii, gęsto ułożonych okien oraz balkonów. Do ozdobienia elewacji użyto kolorowych tynków, co wówczas należało do rzadkości. W długim na 260 metrów bloku wybudowano 272 nowoczesne i funkcjonalne mieszkania, na dole zaś umieszczono punktu usługowe (sklep motoryzacyjny, pasmanterię, drogerie i sklep nasienno-warzywniczy). Projektantami wnętrz byli Irena Pać-Zaleśna, Zdzisław Szpyrkowski i Kazimierz Syrek. Za Blokiem Szwedzkim domy mieszkalne oraz budynki użyteczności publicznej na osiedlu Słonecznym (B-33), Zielonym (B-2 Południe) oraz z prawej strony na osiedlu Szkolnym (B-1). Początek lat 60. XX w.
Photo by Henryk Makarewicz/idealcity.pl