We started a couple years ago this series,
that we called Fire in the Library,
which are really more informal kind
of conversations where researchers that are
visiting the archive or researchers that
have one of their published research prize.
When they come and do their research,
we lure them into coming and talking to
students about how they get interested in a subject,
what made them curious,
how did they go about structuring research,
and how do they get started?
[BACKGROUND] He is here basically to tell us that story.
I really don't know if you want to
do a little bit of an introduction.
To the prize?
To the prize. Yeah, I have to.
Do I? Okay. For those of
you that don't know I'll just give a little piece,
Milka Bliznakov research prize was originated to
honor the founder of the IAWA who in 1985,
prior to that time, Milka Bliznakov,
a professor found that women architects,
as she said, who came from Bulgaria.
Women architects were not taught in the classroom.
She found this an omission.
When she went home one
summer to Bulgaria and she thought,
well, they were in
the Soviet Bloc at that time, of Bulgaria.
That she would certainly
find men and women were equal in terms of
being hired for work that she would
find work for women in architecture in Bulgaria.
But no, it was a communist regime,
the identity of people was
important not to have your identities so present,
so there were no names on any of the drawings.
If you are an architect you did
not work outside of the state.
So she didn't find it there,
and so she came back and
she discussed with our then Dean,
Dr. Charles Steger, about
making an archive for Women in Architecture,
and it was formed in 1985.
For your information, which I think is very beautiful,
one of the foundation collections
is the work of Han Schroeder.
Han was the daughter of Truus Schroder of
the famous to you should be Schroeder Rietveld house.
She grew up in that house and her archive is over there.
It's like a... I could go on. But anyway,
so that was our foundation.
Our archive, we have about 450 or more certainly now.
We're onto the project to collect
and somehow work from every woman in architecture.
That's a tall order, we have a lot of work do. But anyway,
after some years with progress through this and
this international board that guided this endeavor,
this board decided to endow
a prize for Milka Bliznakov
in her honor and make it a research prize.
That's how Alex Bala comes to you today.
Because he of course is the recipient this year.
It's interesting because now we have
a nice situation that we
offer prize also for students here in this school.
So you'll see it offered,
I don't know too much about
I mentioned it last week when I gave the lecture,
about, yeah, that the call is coming out
sometime in April, right?
You can go online and find
out what are the archives and make
a proposal for what you
will propose to do as a research project.
But in addition, there is this initial prize that is
internationally advertised
and the response is quite remarkable.
This year we're fortunate that Alex is the recipient.
Let him say more about himself and the prize.
Today we have Alexander Bala then who is here,
the recipient of the Milka Bliznakov Research Prize
in 2018 prize,
then Christina Dorninger who comes from Vienna.
She's working on her Master's thesis
and so she came to visit the collections
to study the work of
Helene Koller-Buchwieser.
It's a complicated name.
A little bit louder.
Helene Koller-Buchwieser.
Yes. We have a collection.
We thought it was a great opportunity that they just
happened to be in town at the same time.
I brought them here together to talk about how,
again, to get interested in research and how
they start the investigation and plan for it.
They had one day only,
I think so far
at their collections and so they're also going to
tell us a little bit of what it is that they have found
and covered in a little bit of detective work.
Would you go first? We'll start with Alexander Bala.
Hi everyone. It's definitely something to be back.
I graduated in Spring.
Last semester I came out of this program,
so it's good to see most of you.
I don't know, but it's good to see
some familiar faces out there.
When I contacted Paula and Donna about when
I was scheduling to come back in the town to
access the IAWA collection,
she mentioned that she wanted us to
participate in this Fire in
the Library occasion or event.
I didn't even know that it was called the Fire in
the Library until Paula mentioned it.
I never went to a single one of these, I'm afraid to say.
But anyway, I didn't know what the exact pretenses for
this discussion or informal chit chat
or please give me a Q&A session was supposed to be.
What I can do is share
with you some of my work and the beginnings of my work,
and some preliminary directions of what I've been doing.
But let me start with some background.
I am living in Poland right now in Warsaw as
a Fulbright scholar and
my proposal involves the work of another architect.
A post-war Polish architect,
named Oskar Hansen, who,
if anyone's familiar with
the CIAM organization and then the offshoot of
Team Ten after CIAM was
disbanded in the late 1950s and '59.
Hansen was brought up or
cooked in this transition period between
the early modernist credo
and the next generation of architects
that were searching for
more humanistic approach to a doctrine that had become
so rigid in its approach
to the standardization of building elements,
design values, approaches to urban planning.
I can maybe just say a little bit
about Hansen's background and
then a few words about
his work because that's what really brought me to Poland,
and that's the primary auspices of
the work that I'm doing is researching Hansen.
Hansen was born in 1922 in
Helsinki to a Norwegian father and a Russian mother.
He found his way in Poland when he was just a few years
old because his mother had
some land in present-day Lithuania.
In the inter-war years,
leading up to the war,
land was being reclaimed by the Polish government.
So if you had any holdings on
even disputed Polish lands at that time,
in order to build up their nation before the war.
If you had holdings in Polish land you needed to
move back to Poland,
and that would've been your primary address
and your primary residence.
So he wasn't originally Polish,
but he moved there with his family when he
was just a few years old.
At the outbreak of the war,
he volunteered himself for the Polish Home Army.
He was in combat during war and after the war,
he started his studies in
architecture at the Polytechnic in Warsaw.
Which is where he remained for the rest of his life.
He passed away in 2005.
Apart from a couple of years that he
spent working in France
on a French government stipend
where he was working in the offices of Pierre Jeanneret,
who was Le Corbusier's cousin,
and also in the studio of Fernand Leger,
this is a painter.
During his time in France,
he also gained some exposure
to Picasso and Le Corbusier and was invited
to the first CIAM conference
that he was invited to in '49 in
Bergamo as an assistant or a student of Pierre Jeanneret,
who was presenting a few projects at the conference.
That was his first landing.
At an event or a conference that was really at
the forefront
of mainstream architectural discourse at the time,
which is the CIAM organization.
Even if you read the transcripts from Bergamo from 49,
Hansen's listed as a student who openly attacked
Le Corbusier in an exchange with
some other architects in
the particular dialogue because Le Corbusier was
saying that even tapestries
and wall textures can be standardized,
mass-produced, and plastered onto
the interior walls and used as
interior design elements regardless of
any context that they found themselves in.
I think at that moment when Hansen stood up
and began his tirade against Le Corbusier.
That's the key rupture point for me because he attacked
Le Corbusier by criticizing,
again, an overly standardized approach
that wasn't being taken into consideration
the particular specificities of a context in which,
for example, a piece of tapestry or 2D print,
or any kind of sculpture or
piece could simply be mass-produced and
applied and delivered into
any home and he was saying that no,
that these elements should be
designed specific to the context
in which they find themselves in.
That was in between '49 and '59 when he came back,
when he participated in
his next CIAM Conference in Otterlo,
which was also the final CIAM Conference
before it was disbanded.
He worked on a number of
projects back in Poland and then in '59
comes back and finds
himself among a new generation of
younger architects who decide
that they want to redeem
the modern project under some sort
of more humanistic agenda.
Then at that point, CIAM was disbanded and then you
get these offshoots like Team 10 and
[inaudible] and the Metabolists in Japan.
Then after that Hansen came back to
Poland and he published,
it's translated as a manifesto
but it's not really a manifesto for me,
he published his declaration for his theory of open form,
which he continued to
develop and work on for the rest of his life,
which he spent in Warsaw.
Maybe that's all I'll say about Hansen.
The other side of
the labor of my research is of course,
under the auspices of the IAWA,
the Bliznakov prize,
which just due to
fortunate circumstance I found myself in Poland.
I applied for the prize and learned that I
was awarded the prize before
I knew I was going to Poland.
Thankfully, then I got the Fulbright and so it
makes it easier to do research
on this other Polish architect that I've been looking at,
Hanna Adamczewska-Wejchert, who was maybe
a few years younger than Hansen,
really entered into her
prime in terms of the kinds
of commissions that she was working on in the early '50s.
The project specifically that I'm looking at is
her design for the city of Nowe Tychy or New Tychy,
which is in the southwest of Poland,
in the Skrzyczne region.
It's an industrial region,
it's rich with natural resources,
a lot of mining activity.
Right after the war in Eastern countries,
massive amounts of focus
were being concentrated on
the rebuilding effort because towns were devastated,
whole landscapes were devastated.
There was a plan to develop the Western region of
Poland and to develop it as quickly as possible.
Hanna Adamczewska-Wejchert had participated along
with her partner at the time or what later would become
her partner Kazimierz Wejchert, who
was one of the leading urbanists in
Poland at the time and taught at
the Warsaw Polytechnic in the Faculty of Urbanism,
it's called the cadre of urbanism.
They participated in, it was a competition,
and their scheme won as announced in 1950 and for
the next almost 40 years
they were overseeing the development of Nowe Tychy.
It wasn't just the general scheme,
but they were on the spot as
the town was expanding
and as more residents were coming in,
and more workers were being brought in.
That's the general context
of the architect and the project that I'm looking at.
This is an article that I scanned,
but it has the image of the winning scheme.
Is it the wrong article? Never mind.
I can pull it up or I could just describe it anyway.
The winning scheme was basically
organized along across axes going from North to South,
you'd have this belt of green corridor of park space,
city parks, also natural reserves that
would form the Northwest spine, this town.
Then from the East to the West,
you had a railway line
and where the two intersected at
the center would be the railway station.
Then four quadrants surrounding
the railway station each a kilometer in
width would be designated
as a square or some area for market activity.
Then surrounding the four-square quadrant
but still along the orientation of this green spine and
all the other park spaces
and existing natural features that
were maintained, rivers and forests.
Then this East-West axis or the rail
line you had these plots.
They look like cellular plots of housing development.
The idea being that the town needed to be developed as
rapidly as possible and filled
in well up to a certain quota of workers,
which initially was 100,000.
But so anyway, the conjecture that I'm working
with is that the design,
the plan of the city is a classically modernist layout.
Strong parity between,
an adverse parity between green space,
park space and then residential housing blocks that
were floating along in
this field or crossing
orientation of all the spine of workspace.
I say that it's a classically modernist city
because the codecs for
modernist urban development that was
described by the CIAM organization in
1933 under the Athens Charter
is a near perfect execution,
realization of the early goals
that were set out by the first,
sort of the early generation of modernists
[NOISE] and then that
culminated precisely around the halfway point
of the century in the 1950s.
Also that the goals
that were set out by Sion
and by the first-generation of modernists,
[NOISE] perfectly coincided and
synchronized with a socialist contexts.
In Eastern countries and Poland at that time,
cities were being rapidly
developed basically as workers communes.
What they needed to do, the town planners,
was to build up as many residential blocks as possible,
as quickly as possible to support
the capacities of
the mining industry and other industries.
That's exactly the strong figure ground
between building elements,
structures, and park space,
that to me is
a clean sort of modernist approach to urban planning,
is that you house as many,
in this case workers.
You stuff them into these blocks and you provide
all the services within
the same buildings even that they live in.
Even shops and other service activities
would be tucked into the same buildings,
into the residents blocks,
under the same buildings that they were living in.
[NOISE] Then you had
all this park space, leisure space surrounding.
To me, this is a perfect example
of an urban plan
that was supporting a certain kind of Marxist subject,
in a Marxist vision,
in the physiognomy of the urban environment.
The Marxist subject is a productive labor subject,
is a hyper practical subject,
but who also needs time for
regeneration in recreation spaces.
You get this strong parody between building blocks,
residential blocks, and park space, and that's it.
Then in factories kind of more toward
the outside of the center [NOISE]
or beyond the spine of the urban plan.
[NOISE]
The partnership between
Hanna Adamczewska-Wejchert and her husband,
they weren't educated under
a previous generation of inter-war,
a pre-war modernist that from Poland
that had some exposure to the west.
But it was in the air anyway,
kind of modernist timbre
in the academies and within trends,
and visions for urban planning.
Even in their writings,
they describe a almost exaggerated pedantic approach
to shaping the space between building elements.
But the point being is that it's assuming
a very modernist, homogenous,
a fluid space as
a equalizable lattice between building elements and
building forms that they could tinker around
with almost like sculpting or carving
out a homogenous urban space.
But in doing so,
I think what they conceded in
this radical parody between building blocks,
and building elements, and open space,
is a lack of any symbolic order.
Of course, at the time,
you couldn't build any churches
or other spaces of other symbolic venues.
For example, even some football stadiums
or things like bars or music venues,
clubs, all of
these different spaces in addition to parks,
all of these different spaces that
receive a necessary discharge of
social energy was snapped
out in the plan for nobody to hit.
It was just residential blocks, park space.
That's the conjecture that
I'm working with, that I have on the table.
I mean, this is the wrong article but
[LAUGHTER] there's not much you can see.
If anyone has any questions,
but maybe I could just leave it at that.
Unless there's a burning question right now.
[NOISE]
You're better prepared than I am. [LAUGHTER]
Please forgive me.
I'm reading,
because I wanted to present as precise as possible,
and since English is not my first language,
I wrote everything down so that I
could really say what I wanted to say.
I am a student of Art History at
the University of Vienna in Austria
and I am currently working on
my master's thesis about Helene Koller-Buchwieser,
with a focus on her residential buildings.
Koller-Buchwieser was an Austrian architect
and engineer in the post-war period.
For choosing the subject of my thesis,
the period was of prime importance.
My professor in Vienna
specializes on architecture in the post-war period,
and after I attended a seminar that she taught,
I knew I wanted to go in this direction too.
What interests me about this period,
is that most of these buildings don't get
the attention they deserve from scholars and the public,
and as a result of this disinterested,
they are oftentimes not
classified as a historic monuments.
After World War II,
there was a housing shortage in Austria and
many houses had to be built as quickly
and as cost efficiently as possible.
The answer was cheaper materials,
such as concrete and fiber cement.
Sometimes combined with pre-fabrication,
which was not usual in Austria at that time.
Due to their cheap construction
and simple functional style
these buildings are not considered to be of
architectural and cultural value by a wide audience.
But often the architects found
ingenious ways to cope with the restrictions they
face and tried to invent new methods to make the
most of small spaces and seemingly monotonous materials.
In addition, it was a time of experimenting and
creating a new modern Austrian style.
After the depressing time in World War II,
young architects wanted to [NOISE] form
the Vienna as a modern, livable city.
Now half a century later,
a lot of these buildings are in need of restoration.
Sadly oftentimes, the owners decides to
destroy the older buildings to build new ones,
and so many of them don't exist anymore.
To bring awareness to
the cultural and historical importance
of these buildings,
it is crucial that art historians and
architects focus on this topic in their academic work.
I have written two papers on this subject before.
One about the [inaudible] ,
a public swimming pool,
and one about terrorist row houses by [inaudible].
Here you can see what I tried to
describe before in general.
The various buildings of the swimming pool,
or mainly built out of concrete.
But the architects use the texture,
the form boards leave on the concrete as ornament.
Additionally, they built some walls out of smaller blocks
with a hole in them to create a [NOISE]
rhythm and let the sunlight in.
[inaudible] , who was heavily
influenced by the US architecture of his time,
had the ideal that everyone
should have their own house and garden.
Even in urban environments
where little space is available.
To make this possible he worked
on compressed, low-building settlements.
He thought of the garden as additional living space.
So smaller rooms weren't that much of
a problem since the children could go outside to play.
He also added windows all along the South walls,
which makes the rooms feel bigger.
He additionally installed built-in cupboards
in the living room and kitchen, to save space.
For my master's thesis,
I considered different projects,
that could be interesting,
together with my professor.
After a while, she suggested
I could visit the IAWA
since I plan to stay in New York for three months.
She knew about two Viennese architects that have
the collection of the works in this archive.
I chose Helene Koller-Buchwieser,
after taking a closer look at both of them.
The decision to write about her was
not because of an immediate idea,
but more like a path of different opportunities.
One thing led to another.
Normally when I start a research project,
I like to take a look at the object.
That way I can think about it and
contextualize it without being
influenced by the opinions and ideas of other scholars.
With my work here it is a bit different.
I have to look at all the material and photograph it in
just one week without knowing on
what exact buildings I'm focused on,
and without the chance to look at the material again.
My work, now, is to capture everything I may need for
my thesis and to think
about what my main emphasis could be.
[NOISE] Of course this can,
and probably will change,
during the process of planning or writing.
As I work on it,
I will see which questions make sense to be
asked and also if they result in an interesting answer.
Since Austrian architects of the post-war period
oftentimes were influenced by
modern American architecture,
and Helene Koller-Buchwieser [NOISE] stayed in
the US for six months to study,
I asked myself if one can see
an American influence in her work.
But, as there are almost no records
of what she saw and visited in that time,
I'm not sure if this is a rewarding path.
After looking at the material,
I realized that she chose many varied types
of residential buildings and
didn't stick to a distinct form.
As a consequence, [NOISE] I'm also thinking of
describing and comparing these different types.
Like terraced row houses which you can see up here.
Housing in big elongated blocks,
townhouses, and studio houses.
The next step, after my work here,
is to take a closer look at
the gathered material in order to find
more specific research questions and develop
theories about Helene Koller-Buchwieser's work.
During this process, I will also
search other academic literature and search for
sources that can help me answer this question
and confirm or disapprove my theories.
Thank you for listening.
[APPLAUSE].
These are
all photographs and material
I photographed here in the library.
So you found this today?
Not all of them today,
but this week, yes.
Can you both take us to the listing in the archive?
To the person you were looking at besides?
Are you hooked up together?
Yea, I think it is connected.
I hope it is.
We would have to do a transfer
between computers here again.
Well, if she can get on and you can take [OVERLAPPING]
Yes, I have a list of all of
the boxes that I've been taking out.
Okay.
But they're not in 'my documents' [OVERLAPPING].
Can you do that?
I don't exactly know how it works.
I just asked at the front desk
and they provided everything for me.
So when you first were working on this,
this is where you didn't
[NOISE] Might have been
a little different from the next scene.
You can change some
This is just [OVERLAPPING]
the general description of the archive.
You want to see a listing of all? [OVERLAPPING]
You have the "Collection A-Z" to the right.
Yeah.
That's the first one. [OVERLAPPING] Click on yours.
[OVERLAPPING]
That's yours?
Yeah, that's mine.
So you went there. Then what caught your eye?
So....
So Poland. You have an interest.
Did you search for Poland or did you just?
Yes. I actually started from the listings in the archive.
Okay. So you just started?
Yes, I started from the website.
I started looking at the different collections
that were available in the archive.
The first thing that caught my eye
was that it was another architect from Poland
who coincided around the same period
of time and moment of different sets of transition,
from the inter-war years through
the war when the communist system was introduced.
The work between my primary research
focused on Oskar Hansen and Adamczewska-Wejchert.
They have this totally different caliber
of values and certainly the work
that came from both architects.
But the first connection was Poland,
and then the time period.
And so I started looking more into her.
After looking more into her,
is there something that surprised you in your research?
Because it's a small collection.
We have both large,
very large collection, and some small.
And to me, going in in different ways about a year ago.
Always been interesting how in a small one,
you still can find something interesting.
So that's where my passion is.
Did you come across something representative somehow?
Or maybe you haven't thought enough?
Around the time when
Poland was rebuilding itself after the war and
the apex of the early modernist fiction
of rebuilding new society almost from scratch.
I think these two well,
the social and the political and
economic contexts that architects,
particularly in the East
from behind the Iron Curtain found themselves in.
But that also had either educated or
trained or cooked in one way or the
other before war came down.
There's this division between East and West.
That took a lot of these ideas and fantasies from
the first canon of the early modernists and
applied them to a context in a system
that I think really fit
exactly the vision that was being promoted in the West.
Then the exigencies of actually
instantiating new towns from scratch in the east,
and especially in the 40s and the 50s.
I really understand the height of
the naivete that you could design entire towns
just at your drawing table.
But they really believed in the elixir that they drunk.
They really believed in
instantiating visions that would
realize into new urban forms, and new societies.
That this is really the height of the project that I'm
studying for the new city is really a perfect moment.
I think at least between
this deep belief in the techniques,
and the visions of the early modernist cause,
and actually getting a chance to [NOISE] do
it within the context within Poland,
and what was being demanded of architects
at the time and urban planners.
What kind of material did you
find that would support
that research of that town in the collections here?
She was also a prolific writer.
She wrote a lot of also retrospective accounts
of what they were trying to
accomplish and listing out her principles.
Just like in the Athens Charter,
it goes from 1-60, whatever.
These principles of these are
the problems with cities today,
and this is what we can do to create new,
better living conditions, and new societies.
She wrote a lot. They both with our partner published
a few retrospective accounts
on the design for the new city.
But also just really laying out
her beliefs, and her values.
That was driving her,
and motivating both of them in the projects.
[BACKGROUND] because it's a small [OVERLAPPING]
No, no, no, it's not
too many drawings or anything; it's mostly text.
You started suggesting a few things that
probably you would look into.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think it's interesting to compare the post parts where
maybe now that you come up
with a little bit more focused fashion on a person,
the architect, and maybe
you're searching to find a question.
Yes.
You want to look at what [OVERLAPPING].
I just started working on this,
so I don't know a lot yet.
[BACKGROUND] This is a bigger collection.
There was one bar box with
just general information on her,
and then there are,
I think 77 big folders with drawings.
I'm going through them and photographing.
What surprised me is that the sheer volume of
what she built in her working years.
She also rebuilt a lot
of buildings because a lot
of them got destroyed in the war.
But in comparison, with what Alex said,
it not designing new cities
but rebuilding single townhouses.
She did a lot of them.
They're always very simple.
I think with that also,
it was important to build as
much and as fast as possible,
because people were bombed
out and they didn't have anywhere to go.
Do you have some images of work?
I don't think that you can get to the
image space from here?
Yeah, I have. I can search for them.
That's one of the bigger blocks.
People had different visions of how to rebuild.
As I mentioned, [inaudible] ,
he had this vision
of big cities built out of small buildings,
not where everyone had their own house.
She mostly did more bigger blocks where more people,
more flats could fit in.
I think there's something really interesting in
the two processes in that the type of evidence you have.
The idea, you have the manifesto,
the declarations of intent,
and then the visual evidence of construction,
a story or history of
those two different types
of evidence of the archive and apply it.
You've seen the relationships
to each other is really interesting.
It reflects that the two different stages that you're
at are not just about how far are you along
the process but the type of
evidence that you have to work.
When you have the visual [OVERLAPPING] it
has to be so much into it and
try to understand what's behind
it versus the words on it.
She didn't really write anything about her work.
It's primarily looking at objects.
I think also there's not
much academic literature about her too,
because mostly male architects get studied more,
not a lot of people focus on women architects.
Also, this time is not very explored.
Unless you know what you're looking for, it's not
a very interesting city
to visit and to be there on the ground and
actually just stand up
and look at some of these buildings,
I mean, they're rather banal, just housing blocks.
A lot of that also has to do with just the limitations
of building any kind of
other non-expedient form or
non-expedient architecture building and
also industry limitations,
materials, technological limitations.
I think we are more of the force
behind the vision and
the architectural and urbanistic proposition
where you can detect from a bird's eye view
or from more of a removed position from the writings
and because they were there for so many years after
the initial scheme was
accepted overseeing it's implementation,
and because a lot of criticism
also that came that was attacking
the project and uniformity
of all these states of housing blocks.
They reverted to writing
a lot almost in a apologetic tone,
a self redeeming tone.
Okay, this is what we're trying to do
and these are the proportions that we're
trying to achieve in the space between
building elements and we're taking into account
psychological perceptual aims that
aren't necessarily so appreciated
if you don't know what you're looking at.
A lot of it does take the form of writing and
not so much looking at one of these objects,
one of these housing blocks
that might only reveal so much.
It would be interesting to see the two different types of
information that you'll find in
the archive and what that tells.
Did you find the newsletter [inaudible]?
Yeah.
Because she came here.
Some of the things in the newsletter
of course, they were not
written down except by...
Milka received this in conversation.
So that's very original.
If I can go back to it because I'm just
continuing the train of thought [LAUGHTER].
What you can glean from the object,
if we're looking at just a plain residential block,
is maybe what it's repressing.
What is what?
Repressing. The possibilities and
opportunities of symbolic order
that get [NOISE] deafened.
If you reduce the urban form to
this radical parody between
the open space and then housing block.
Like I mentioned service spaces, shops, day-cares,
schools were all stuffed into this block,
into this single object.
Even today funny pattern
that you can notice is post 89.
Obviously, a lot of these blocks are still around.
They're everywhere but on the first floor,
on the ground level,
you get these shops and different kinds of
businesses that this repetitive facade sits on.
The ground level, they call it
ground floor capitalism [LAUGHTER].
But it's an interesting celebration,
even bringing to light a similar pattern
that you had during the communist time.
All of these spaces and
services and shops and different things were stuffed
into this single object and then just
around it was nothing but the spaces
that were required for the worker to regenerate
and head back to the factory.
What's interesting is you can
see that instead of visiting
the buildings in person because we see
how they're used in gravitation every time.
Which is obviously different than
the image of the building that
you get from representation that gets archived.
[BACKGROUND]
But I think it's also
a socialistic concept to have
everything you need at one place.
[NOISE] So it creates a community.
I grew up on
the outskirts of Vienna [NOISE] and [inaudible]
A who is an Austrian architect
built really big buildings.
You have everything there.
So it looks like that there are more people living
there than in some other cities in Austria.
You have swimming pools on the top floor.
You have indoor swimming pools on the lower level.
You have all those shops there.
You have childcare, schools, a church,
tennis and badminton courts.
It's this concept.
Well, because you don't need to amalgamate
your tautological patterns don't
need to be amalgamated,
or stretched out any further
than dividing your time, dividing your living,
[NOISE] your existence between work, labor, and dwelling.
[inaudible] Lot of this.
But it's interesting that it comes even
before this Marxist socialism because it's
[NOISE] Corbusier's [OVERLAPPING] Modernist
idea about the functionalist container.
[OVERLAPPING] Both of these conditions in
Vienna and all of the social housing
and then Poland as a socialist state,
it gets unfolded into all of the political economy.
[inaudible] it's exactly that Marxist diagram.
[NOISE] [OVERLAPPING] it's this parity between
doing work and dwelling, working and relaxation.
[NOISE]
Radically right manifest
in the built environment
as a diagram between living and working.
So maybe sometimes these buildings
don't look that interesting,
but they have an interesting concept
or manifest behind it.
We could say another anecdote.
I found in an interview with
[inaudible] the interviewer brought
up this example of housing block.
But Somebody lived in as a means
of protesting the banality and
uniformity of their dwelling.
Painted plaster, this giant image of
the skull on the side of the building,
and that it was only
existing for a couple days before it was removed,
but then years on,
people still referred to it as the skull building.
So it's exactly that opportunity
of discharge of the symbolic order
that was systematically repressed.
[NOISE] Just snapping it down to [NOISE] living block,
[NOISE] building block [NOISE]on an open space,
park space that venue is not just parts [NOISE] again,
but even cars or other venues
or religious [NOISE] sites, places of worship.
You would need to have
those venues that can receive
this discharge of the symbolic order,
this plan [NOISE] of symbolic life.
That doesn't exist under
a Marxist vision in these urban environments.
[NOISE]