A troublesome gift from the USSR.It could end like in Leningrad

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The first attempt to watch the Soviet hit of 1975.in which Barbara Brylska played the main role in the fact that I turned it off after the first hour.The phenomenon of the film "Happy New Year" in Russia can be compared to the euphoria that "Kevin alone at home" causes with us: everyone watched several times, and in front of the TVs, crowds are gathering in front of the TVs.

The Russians are watching "Happy..."On the last day of the old year.They are drawn to the story of a man who has forgotten so in the fun with his friends that he mistakenly got on the plane to Leningrad.In fact, his colleague had to fly from the city over the new one, but in the heat of fun everything was wrong.Żenia is not aware that instead of Moscow, he walks around Leningrad.He reaches the estate, takes a certain step to the front door, enters the elevator to the "his" floor, opens the door (the key fits!) And goes straight to the bed.

Only after a while will he realize that this is not a bed and not his apartment.It is not even his city anymore.

It seemed naive to the creation of the filmmakers that you can base the story on such a stretch error.Well, it's drunk!

After a few months, I watched the movie with greater humility, and in my mind I apologized to the creators for assessing their work from the perspective of a person living in the 21st century, when each block on one street can look completely different and it is certainly impossible to confuse them - because what a developer, it's a different project.At my excuse, I had only that not only the estate/city/the whole empire seems to be unthinkable, in which the streets are their clones.And this was the case in the USSR, where the houses in the form of prefabricated elements left the factories and ran away all over the 1/8 globe, the country.And nothing but unpack them in a sermon or Volgograd, set up and ride (awaited for years) assignments.

And when there is a housing hunger in the country on a scale already unknown to modern Europe, even these tight clicks in blocks deprived of any features will be a greatly consuming.

In Bialystok as in Leningrad

Apparently and in Poland it happened that people were confusing blocks - and it is easy to imagine, because although the architects tried to give the estates a scratch of individuality, some looked like multiplication of the same building.And it could have been even worse, because the Soviet Union wanted to treat us with dozens of great, ugly molochs that would dominate Polish cities much more than the Palace of Culture and Science over Warsaw.

The idea of this peculiar gift appeared in the mid -1960s.when the Polish Ministry of Construction announced a competition to develop a complex of the housing construction system from a large slab.The same for all of Poland.The houses were to be erected quickly and as low as possible, because the needs were huge.

Źródło: East News / Bloki w smutnym miasteczku w Kazachstanie

For comrades from Moscow, it was obvious that a great album, which is soon to build Poland like it is long and wide, is to come from the Soviet Union.The question was only about whether it would be a system developed in Leningrad or Moscow.The Polish side knew that some gifts could cause more damage than benefits, so she really wanted to skillfully refuse the gift.She knew about poor quality Soviet buildings from prefabricated buildings from 1958.When the delegation of our dignitaries went to Moscow and returned with the conviction that you have to stay away from Soviet blocks.

The gift, however, came to the port of Gdańsk.In pieces, as befits a big album.Forty workers from Leningrad came to this, who were to install everything efficiently and solve Polish housing problems once and for all.

Apparently, they were Szkaradne, Crushed and - a drama for the architect - designed so that nothing could be changed, adapted to the needs of a particular estate - writes Beata Chomątowska in the book "Betonia", which recently appeared by the publishing house "Czarne".

- What was supposed to be a gift from the Soviet Union, in fact it was not, because you have a "Leningrad" Poland paid a lot.Went to several cities on the west coast.Fortunately, both architects and officials responsible for construction came and said that it would be too scary and that it makes no sense at all.The decision was made that we would not accept a gift - he says in an interview with Wirtualna Polska.

"Let the walls up"

Architects who began to create in the interwar.They seemed too avant -garde and unbearable, now they can be built.The six -year conflict razed the buildings with the ground in the largest cities, the space has been, which needs to be built quickly.

Źródło: Wikimedia Commons CC BY / Plac Konstytucji - Fragment MDM

Unfortunately, their generation was very unlucky.Always too modern: no modernism had a chance to develop in sad times of socialist realism.

But you have to design and build.Poland, already within the new borders, became a great construction site very quickly.

- buildings erected in the post -war period were built quickly and often just like.Many professionals were killed in the war, there was no one to train young people entering the profession - says Chomątowska.-Ind today we look at the block housing estates of the first two post -war decades, we will see an interesting correctness: the buildings are set at equal intervals, very geometric, which looks unnatural.This is because at that time the builders had only one type of crane at their disposal.

Fortunately, no night lasts forever.1956 comes, thaw.The architects have the opportunity to go west for the first time and can see how to build there.They are upset, they want to catch up with 10 years of arrears and build as modern as possible.Except that Western Europe already sees a lot of mistakes related to the original, dogmatic approach to modernism and leaves it.We are just appearing with us.

Gomułka's sustainable euphoria lasts briefly and around 1962.The "great savings period" begins.

Kłopotliwy prezent od ZSRR. Mogło skończyć się jak w Leningradzie

- This is another drama for architects: they already know that they will not go crazy again.They must unpleasant their ideas to the rapid framework specified by the system - says Chomątowska.

In the harsh times you need to save and Gomułka mastered this principle to perfection (and if he was overlooked by a place where you can make more or less apparent savings, then someone from his surroundings certainly served by a guide).

Beata Chomątowska writes about overzealous activists who, in order to show that nothing is impossible, postulate increasing existing four -story blocks (and do not believe architects who argue that for construction reasons it is impossible) or replacing trees between the blocks of vines on the walls.After getting off, you can fit more buildings on the plot, so it's worth it, and the DS representative.Examples of economical housing (yes, there was such an office) will be proud.

You can "optimize" indefinitely: real savings will bring building multi -family houses on unarmed plots somewhere on the periphery of city blocks with shared kitchens and bathrooms.One upstairs - and this is a social promotion for residents who until recently could only dream about any bathroom.

Fortunately, not everyone was crazy.Engineers from the Institute of Housing Construction have shown that blocks with shared toilets are actually four percent more expensive than those in which each apartment is equipped with a bathroom.The grouped bathrooms also take up more space than when tiny rooms (because everything in Gomułkowski blocks was tiny) belong to individual premises.

The authorities gave up, but the idea of saving a place by giving up the "individual" bathrooms remained at the back of the head.So can he allow them to resign in studio apartments?And again "Pas", resistance was set up by architects, builders and local party activists from Warsaw.

- We will not create a landless zone in Central Europe.No building, for example-saving in Warsaw will be built!- thunder.And this, fortunately, ended the discussion.

Different ideas came to mind to officials who doubled and tripled to "squeeze" as many usable space as possible from each building.Limiting the number of doors in apartments, reduction of windows, or maybe giving up them in some rooms?

And most importantly: of course, the apartments are to be small.They are used for living, not asking guests, so the area per person should not exceed 7 square meters (later it fell to five).

The West did not want a CD that Poland bought happily

Coming to power in the early 1970s., Edward Gierek promised citizens a better, more prosperous life.It is difficult to be happy in a cubicle with a blind kitchen, so the changes also included the assumptions of how to live.

We can distinguish two phases for Gierek.The first gives a lot of hope.A large album begins to dominate, because the first secretary buys from the west, which has already discouraged from it, technology and equipment of "house factories".It is built quickly, but the queue of those in need does not decrease.

Źródło: East News

Those created until the mid -1970s.The estates, although mass -produced from a large slab, are relatively successful.Soon, however, it slips out of control.The crisis begins, you need to cut costs.It is getting harder to get materials, more and more deficiencies in these buildings: gaps under the windows, floor curves.Of course, they were also earlier, but the scale is getting dangerous.

- We can call such housing with all responsibility blocks of flats - explains Beata Chomątowska.

Because not every housing estate built -up with blocks is, although today the name "block of flats" is widely functioning as a synonym of the estate.

- Meanwhile, this term applies only to large housing estates from the end of Gierkowski and the 80s.Overgrown, scaled, gray, uniform in its mass, without an urban concept, because it was often killed in the seed when it had to be implemented - he describes.

We all know them.

Not only the middle class is in the upside down

Let's leave the housing problems of the 60s.and 70.- Today we have ours.Admittedly, the allocation of the apartment does not need to be signed up ten years in advance, but it is difficult to say that they become widely available (even because of prices that are constantly going up).A few months ago, a discussion about the problems that causes a middle class fake through the bills of one of the daily newspapers.After reading a few texts, one could see that the reason for at least half of the disputes that Poles are taking place is that people want to live in the roasted housing estates, and the dismantling of fences and sending back the bodyguards was to make love between Poles explode with unknownBy force before.

I am asking Beata Chomątowska if he has similar reflections.

Źródło: East News

- This is the myth that only the inhabitants of new apartment buildings are playing.All Poles are playing, also in old housing estates.While writing the book, I had the opportunity to cooperate with sociologists who studied this phenomenon.And it turned out that also in old housing estates, it is universal practice to put the barriers to ensure a place to park and prevent people from outside from leaving cars on a nearby area.

And further - many owners of ownership apartments treat neighbors who rent.They consider them a different group - because they are only here for a while, there is no need to get to know them - he explains.

Finally, I ask what today's developers - because they decide about the shape of contemporary housing estates - they could learn from architects from the PRL period.

- in many housing estates (an example will be the Krakow estate of the XXX lecia from the 70s., today Krowodrza Górka) you can see that the urban planner was the team thinking comprehensively.He did not focus on placing as many blocks as possible, but he also took into account access to the sun, breathable, greenery between buildings.The estate was often thought about a contemporary variety of the town, where there must be a central square and a main communication axis, facilitating interaction between residents.Although due to the lack of funds in the 1960s.and 70.Not all urban planners were implemented, but they tried to differentiate the buildings.Demographic forecasts were also taken into account, ensuring the equipment of the estates with the right number of schools and kindergartens.

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