And the Oscar goes to Blocks. Why should the housing estates portrayed by Bareja receive an award?

Watch the video "Alternatywy 4" celebrates its birthday

Stanisław Bareja, the undisputed king of Polish comedy in the communist era, had a great fondness for blocks of flats. They became the background of the series, which gained cult status. "Alternatywy 4", shot in Warsaw's Ursynów, was not the first manifestation of the director's "love" for the confusing rules of functioning in the period of people's Poland.

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With Bareja among the blocks. Housing estates not only in "Alternatywy"

Eight years before "Alternatywy", which celebrates its birthday on November 30, Bareja portrayed another housing estate. The background of the film "There is no rose without fire", in which housing problems are the axis of the plot, is a different place. The frames include the Ruda estate, although not only, because the director chose many more locations. Erected in the early 1970s, at the height of the communist construction rush, it is located in Warsaw's Bielany.

In order to build apartments for the masses, the authorities decided to liquidate the then existing buildings in Marymont. What is worth emphasizing, when the filmmakers were shooting the film, they were still an independent commune. It became a district of the capital only in 2002. And the housing estate itself became part of Bielany in 1994.

Ruda, also known as Ruda-Marymont, is the work of architect Zdzisław Łuszczyński. He designed housing estates "named after the People's Republic of Poland" in the 1950s.

The Marymont-Ruda housing estate in the 1980s. Photo. National Digital Archive

A great album is not a congratulation

Both "Alternatywy" and "Nie ma rose" are certainly not a congratulation for "decision makers", engineers and builders of the communist era. Bareja ridiculed the housing policy, i.e. waiting for allotments, or adding tenants to residents, as well as the ubiquitous fudges.

Today, both the series and the movie can be difficult to understand when it comes to this context. In "There is no rose without fire" we get to know the adventures of Jan and Wanda Filikiewicz's marriage, who no longer want to live with the woman's ex-husband. Her father sets his house on fire to force the authorities to grant the woman a residence in the capital. When the Filikiewiczs appear in Warsaw, Jerzy Dąbczak, Wanda's ex-husband, also follows them. He and his wife move into a new apartment, because it is allowed by registration regulations.

And the Oscar goes to Blocks. Why the neighborhoods portrayed by Bareja should get an award?

The main characters fight not only with an unwanted tenant, but also with ubiquitous faults. When you try to close the door, it falls out with the frame and a piece of wall. The pipes in the bathroom create an impassable maze, and filling the bathtub with water requires directing the stream with a shirt.

In "Alternatywy" we have tenants assigned to one apartment - here the coincidence of names ("Kotek" and "Kołek") is to blame. We also have a walled-up vacancy and an apartment assigned to one of the communist dignitaries "out of line".

Blocks are a great opportunity for Bareja to present human relationships. The estate is a "mini-Poland" - we have here workers, intellectuals, oppositionists, people who favor the authorities. However, everyone has to live somewhere, warm up, eat dinner. Bareja skilfully looked under the roofs of Polish apartments and showed the world from the perspective of housing and neighborhood problems.

Budimex has signed a contract for the construction of a bridge from the center of Warsaw to Praga-Północ

Construction of a housing estate from a large panel Photo. Deutsche Fotothek?/Wikimedia (CC 3.0)

The miracle of prefabrication, or how to build faster

But where did the idea of ​​building identical-looking housing estates come from? Before they became home to 12 million Poles, they were a technological novelty. Even in the 1960s, the blocks were not built of prefabricated elements, but using the traditional technique.

A large slab made it possible to build faster, which was invaluable for the communist authorities with economic aspirations. However, practice did not always go hand in hand with theory. The botches portrayed by Bareja in films and TV series had their source in imperfect technology and the pressure to meet standards. Defective, undersized elements were delivered to the construction site, which the builders saved as best they could. Patching holes, however, did not always help, and the time that had to be spent on makeshift repairs meant that the workers were in a hurry, assembling, for example, doors, faucets, railings carelessly.

Block housing estates are back in favor

Ruda, like many other housing estates of the communist era, is doing well. It can even be said that the great album is making a comeback. Former blocks of flats are well connected, surrounded by shops, kindergartens and schools. Today, many old housing estates are covered with greenery, they have paved roads, lampposts and sidewalks. Urban planning in the crude era of the People's Republic of Poland was on a completely different level - not only spatial order was important, but also recreational areas, roads, service points. Many housing estates built today on the outskirts of cities still cannot boast of such "luxuries" - modern developers rather try to fill the space as much as possible and reduce costs.

Presentation of a block made of a large panel Photo. National Digital Archive

Is a large slab really unsuitable for living? - Reality does not look as bad as in Bareja's films - Marcin Krasoń, an expert on the Home Broker real estate market, evaluates the apartments in the blocks of flats of the communist era. The building slab was looked at by the Building Research Institute. "Their technical condition does not indicate the degree of degradation, which indicates a threat to the durability of the buildings" - experts say.

- No worries. Nothing will collapse. We built well and reliably - confirms Andrzej Roch Dobrucki, president of the Polish Chamber of Civil Engineers, quoted by Money in an interview with money.pl. Today, prefabricated houses and estates are making a comeback. The technology of their production, however, is different - the thermal insulation coefficient, the precision of workmanship and assembly guarantee that the vicissitudes recorded by Stanisław Bareja are basically impossible.

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