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
Residential buildings in Sector D, Kolorowe Estate. The new sector was designed by architects Tadeusz Rembiesa and Bolesław Skrzybalski. The loose layout of the blocks was designed by architects Józef König, Andrzej Radnicki, Adam Fołtyn, Wacław Głowacki and Kazimierz Karasiński. The arrangement of buildings was harmonious and rhythmical; there were three estates: D-3 (Handlowe), D-2 (Kolorowe), D-1 (Spółdzielcze) and D-31 (Centrum). The shape of the sector had to relate to the original project, but the urban layout and the height of the blocks were consistent with the nearby airport in Rakowice-Czyżyny. The frontages were coloured, the buildings were mostly had four floors, eleven-storey blocks were rare. So-called Swedish blocks, or formally modern buildings, were the most numerous. In Sector D, the school designed by Kazimier Karasiński was also counted among modern constructions. 1960s.
Bloki mieszkalne w sektorze D, osiedle Kolorowe. Sektor w nowej formie zaprojektowany został przez architektów Tadeusza Rembiesę i Bolesława Skrzybalskiego. Bloki tworzą luźny układ przestrzenny, zostały zaprojektowane przez architektów Józefa Königa, Andrzeja Radnickiego, Adama Fołtyna, Wacława Głowackiego i Kazimierza Karasińskiego. Budynki rozplanowane zostały w sposób harmonijny i rytmiczny, i podzielone na cztery osiedla: D-3 (Handlowe), D-2 (Kolorowe) i D-1 (Spółdzielcze) oraz D-31 (Centrum). Kształt sektora uzależniony był od pierwotnego projektu, jednak układ urbanistyczny i wysokość budynków uzależniony był od znajdującego się w pobliżu lotniska w Rakowicach - Czyżynach. Budynki posiadały kolorowe elewacje i najczęściej osiągały wysokość czterech pięter, do rzadkości należą budynki jedenastokondygnacyjne. Większość z nich to tzw. bloki szwedzkie, czyli budynki zaliczane do nowoczesnych formalnie. W sektorze D do nowoczesnych gmachów należała także szkoła zaprojektowana przez Kazimierza Karasińskiego. Lata 60.
Photo by Henryk Makarewicz/idealcity.pl