Wild Capitalism - On genericness and identity in Post-communist Wola

WILD CAPITALISM On genericness and identity in Post-communist Wola Asia Zwierzchowska MA Architecture HTS 2020/21

Interpretative Drawing

The wrecked setting of the WWII Warsaw left most of city’s architecture in ruins. The post-war building of the city drew to the previously documented, depicted and imagined past, with the old town reconstruction referencing to 18th century painter Canaletto, and his canvases used as a reference of Warsaw’s identity. Here it was the history and the context that constituted a part of the new post-war Old Town.

Canaletto, Warsaw: Cracow Suburb seen from the Cracow Gate, 1768

TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION 9 FROM COLLECTIVE SYSTEM 11 TO CAPITALIST INDIVIDUALISM FROM CENTRAL PLANNING 19 TO INDIVIDUAL DISREGARD FROM PAST DECISIONS 27 TO CURRENT CONSEQUENCES CONCLUSION 33 BIBLIOGRAPHY 36 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 41

Fig 1.0

Fig 2.0

INTRODUCTION

The generic relates to shared and non-specific character related to a group of similar things.1 The generic is exactly typical of the kind of thing mentioned, and that has no special or unusual characteristics.2 The generic describes commonly found features. 3 It is difficult to pin down the term generic, when the word itself epitomises common and wide-spread character of things. Relating to a group, the generic can stand for things neutral, almost seen as banal.

But what makes the generic? I incline to state that there are many kinds of the generic. The words Live, Laugh, Love (Fig 1.0) belong to widely repeated lines with a simple general meaning; a stock image of a smiling family is used across websites, books, or even as a part of political program4 (Fig 2.0) - both of these fit into the definition of the generic. The generic is repetitive, the generic has commonly found features.

In the capitalist system, operating through persuading consumers of uniqueness of the commodities, the uniqueness becomes homogenous and commodified. The accumulation of seemingly unique and special concepts, images, things, blurs their distinguished features, rather making them no different from commodities in general.5 This essay explores the concept of the generic in the post-communist Poland through development of high-rise office buildings, and investigates the way the generic could thrive through the lack of unified identity. In this case, genericness is discussed through a perspective of historical and architectural setting. The generic is seen as wanted and despised, as global and as local. The essay focuses on Warsaw and the borough Wola, located closely to the Palace of Culture, which underwent an intensive transformation after 1989, and still carries the marks of the first capitalistic rush towards individual profit. The research tracks down the actors involved in the developments, mapping out the refences and influences behind their design.

The genericness is analysed through three aspects: globalisation, chaos, and identity. The first chapter paints the historical setting of the transformation, and looks into globalisation in the case of the city and borough. The second chapter discusses the urban and architectural setting of the generic, its definition in the urban scale and spatial chaos. It focuses on a fragment of Wola between Prosta and Chlodna Street, which carries numerous historical buildings as well as numerous on-going construction sites. The last chapter discusses the identity of the generic, and looks in more detail to some of the buildings on the site, as Ilmet Tower and Reform Plaza. It considers the current and future setting of the borough.

The essay looks at a post-communist country in the time of transformation through iconic works related to genericness, such as Robert Venturi with Denis Scott Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas from 1972 and Rem Koolhaas’ The Generic City from 1995. Learning from Las Vegas depicted American urbanism at the time modernism decline and economy growth in decades after WWII, The Generic City was written when capitalism started thriving world-wide. These references allow to find connection between the concept of generic established in the Western capitalistic world, and the generic that had only started entering the Poland in 1989.

1 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/generic 2 https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/generic 3 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/generic 4 https://www.wykop.pl/link/1366847/tusk-promuje-polska-rodzine-ze-zdjeciem-irlandzkiej-rodziny-w-tle/ 5 Harvey D. The art of rent: globalisation, monopoly and the commodification of culture.

Fig 3.0 Róża Luksemburg Electric Lamp Factory

Fig 4.0 Róża Luksemburg Electric Lamp Factory during demolition in 2011

FROM COLLECTIVE SYSTEM TO CAPITALIST INDIVIDUALISM

The political, cultural and economic shift of 1990s transformed Poland from a communist-ruled country to a capitalist society. The shift caused de-regulation of labour markets, operating under the regime, and gave space for wild capitalism, an absence of rules and regulations governing behaviour of corporations and corporate elites within the society and economy. The complete change in the ruling system affected every field of life, realising itself in new longings, such as international travels and access to foreign goods, and finding itself in new representations like street banners and billboards.

In 1945, Soviet Union instituted a new communist government in Poland. People’s Poland Republic, as was the name of the state at the time, underwent a rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, improving the wrecked condition of the post-WWII country. The economy was fully dependent on the state, and the freedom of speech and culture was restricted.

In 1945 Warsaw was severely ruined, and 85% of the buildings were completely destroyed. With the support from Soviet Union, the Old Town was thoroughly reconstructed, and in 1955, Moscow funded the Palace of Culture in the centre of the city which overshadowed the landscape with its height for the next seventy years. The state rebuilt the industrial areas in the city, as in Wola, a borough in a close location to Palace of Culture, with a history in manufacturing reaching XIX century and almost 800 enterprises by 1939. Despite the loss of people in the ghetto and the massacre of 1944, Wola remained significant to the labour-based economy of the state. Small pre-war enterprises and workshops were taken over by the regime and developed into large-scale factories. Róża Luksemburg Electric Lamp Factory (Fig 3.0), was established in 1948 in the place of a pre-war Philips Factory, used by Germans during the war; Marcin Kasprzak Radio Factory was open in 1951 and at its peak served as a workplace for 6,000 people.6 Photochemical Factory Foton and many others were build in the following years.

After the creation of opposition groups in late 1970s such as trade unions and student groups, the country went through a wave of labour strikes. By 1981, Solidarity, the main union, had 9 million members, and after few turbulent years, it started negotiations with the government in 1989 and in the same year contested 35% of seats in the Parliament. Amending the Constitution on 29 December 1989, the Parliament officially restored democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. After the hyperinflation of 1989, Leszek Barcelowicz, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland (1989-1991, 1997-2001), introduced a series of reforms, such as privatisation of industries and properties, creating a property market, autonomising national enterprises and opening the market to foreign investors.

Warsaw and Wola were responding to the changing system. The end of communist regime meant the end of the industry era, and all over the country establishments started to fold, factories were privatised and closed. Electric Lamp Factory saw its end in 1991, Kasprzak Radio Factory announced bankruptcy in 1994, many others followed.7 Suddenly the manufacturing tradition of Wola was outshined by the attractiveness of its location, posing as a suitable home for new businesses, international corporations, banks, and other services. The entrepreneurial energy thrived, dynamically changing the structure 6 https://culture.pl/pl/superartykul/transformacja-w-soczewce-przemiany-warszawskiej-woli 7 Ibidem

Fig 5.0

the borough. High-density developments took over the public space, high-rise buildings rose among closing factories, competing with Palace of Culture (Fig 5.0). In 1997 the construction of Wola’s first skyscraper Ilmet was finished, and two years later the Warsaw Trade Tower was erected, which became the tallest building in Wola and second tallest in Warsaw. The grounds of Kasprzak Radio Factory were split between National Polish Bank, Credit Bank, BGŻ Bank and apartment developers, and from 1996 filled with new office buildings and gated communities. Bold and colourful billboards and posters quickly realised a selling aspect of capitalism. The new primary function of the borough was inscribed by the new developments, giving historic sites little protection as in the case of the XIX factories8, and treating the building of soviet era with little or no consideration. The new was towering over the old; Wola was being rushed into the future.

The transition of post-communist economies was characterised by rapid and massive liberalization9, meaning a change from a centrally-planned economy to a market led economy, as well as by the lack of regulation and government’s intervention in the economy. The term wild capitalism10 has often been used to describe these economies, as a product of de-regulation of labour markets under postcommunist ‘transformation’. Dan Ioan Dascălu states that wild capitalism seems to be related to Spencer’s individualism11, which conveys the concepts of Darwinism: the most strong-willed one will be the one to survive. As the non-capitalist to capitalist transition changed the view on the source of profit, it activated new actors, who saw opportunities in the rapid change. Individualism, long constrained by soviet collectiveness, was allowed its own gains and profits. Standing in a strong opposition to capitalism, communism as an economic ideology advocated for a communally-owned wealth and property. During communism, industries were state-owned, and the economy was aiming to profit from the producer’s market and similar economies, instead of reacting to the changing individualised preferences of customers.12 The transformation of the 1990s rejected the value of central planning, defining the direction of the capital investment and consumption, and instead praised individualism and profit-making, unregulated and ungoverned.

Through the blankness of the post-soviet landscape, through the oppressed dreams of the change, through the sudden, uncontrolled pursue of profit, the new reality entered the post-communist Poland.

Capitalism welcomed globalisation, and the foreign longings repelled by the soviet system, could finally become realised. Discussing capitalist dreams during the period before transformation, M. Szcześniak and M. Halawa reference Polish cinematography of that time and its portrayal of the West.13 They bring up the 1969 film The Structure of Crystal by Krzysztof Zanussi, and characters admiration of commercials in a Western magazine. One of the scenes in the film (Fig 6.0-6.3) depicts a provincial family respectfully looking through the main character’s photographs, which are presented as a proof of his worldliness. The images fill the view with big-city capitalist architecture, with a musical theme accenting each of the new picture, building a narrative of a Western dream.14 The foreign, the free, the colourful, it all constituted the exact opposition to the reality of People’s Poland Republic, and quickly started to replace it.

8 Jóźwik, R. Kształtowanie się nowego centrum miasta na terenie warszawskiej dzielnicy Wola. The formation of a new metropolitan centre in Warsaw’s Wola district., p.3 9 Dascalu D. I., Individualism and Morality in the Post-communist Capitalism, p.284 10 Upchurch, M. Persistent Economic Divergence and Institutional Dysfunction in Post-Communist Economies: An Alternative Synthesis’, Competition & Change 11 Ibidem p.282 12 Rykiel Z., Globalization and transformation in Poland 13 Halawa M., Szcześniak M., Realizm kapitalistyczny polskiej transformacji 14 Zanussi K. Structure of Crystal

Fig 6.0-6.3 The Struture of Crystal

Fig 7.0 Las Vegas Street

Fig 8.0 Warsaw Srodmiescie

The Western dream, the American genus loci, seems to be realised in the City that Never Sleeps – Las Vegas. In the book Learning from Las Vegas. The forgotten symbols of forgotten past published in 1972, Robert Venturi, Denis Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, examined new types of urban forms emerging in the commercial Strip of the city (Fig 7.0). The architecture they analysed did not derive from architectural history nor from a careful planning, but rather from intuition. It was driven by possibilities of profit, and because Las Vegas was going through the greatest growth at the time, it was expanding into hotels, signs, and neon-embossed parking structures.15 The spatial elements are understood as communicative, more often identified as symbols rather than forms.16 In Learning from Las Vegas, as well as in his other essays, Venturi and his co-authors find the generic, unplanned, pragmatically real, conventional and ordinary architecture fascinating, and at the same time vernacular to its capitalist setting. This was contrasting to the era of modernism, which was seeing its decline in 1960s, and which praised purity and embraced minimalism. For Venturi and his co-authors, the freedom and ordinariness of urban elements found in Las Vegas was a fresh response in its contrast to modernist solutions to what a city and architecture can be. On the ground of similar contrast in Poland, the communist rules and restrictions, the capitalistic search for profit brought similarly opposing and fresh elements to the urban landscape: the glazed high-rises rarely seen before; the colourful banners covering concrete buildings (Fig 8.0) In Poland the reality emerging through the transformation opened a door for generic, and that door was widened by globalisation. Globalization as a process of free international exchange and interaction, refers to reconfiguration of economic and geographic scale.17 It allows for moving profits and costs across different locations. Transformation opened the market in East-Central Europe, and resulted in the influx of foreign investments, as well as in economic and spatial solutions already seen across the globe. Communist systems of power and influence started operating through an open market, but now welcomed and encouraged change, possibilities, and individuality, almost painting the postcommunist scene as tabula rasa, where all the new was preferred over the old, allowing genericness and globalisation to thrive.

Rem Koolhaas brings up the concept of tabula rasa in his 1995 essay “Generic City”. He writes that the generic starts from tabula rasa; if there was nothing, now it [the generic] is there; if there was something, it has replaced it. It must, otherwise it would be historic. 18 He states that the generic is a reflection of present past and present ability. The generic in Wola removes archetypes, offers flexibility. The previously defined spaces lose their functions, as in the case of Department Store Wola, built in 1956, was absorbed by Tesco in 1990s and later transformed into an office building, depriving the borough of a centre. The urban fabric was produced to maximise gains, and as the means and gains differed, so did the space it produced. The newly erected building drew to the capitalist architecture of the West, gated communities stunned with luxury, billboards and sings flooded streets and buildings, and that was happening with little regard to the scale and the context.

15 Venturi, R., Scott Brown, D. and Izenour, S. Learning from Las Vegas: the forgotten symbolism of architectural form., p.34 16 Ibidem 17 Kusiak J., Chaos Warszawa: porządki przestrzenne polskiego kapitalizmu, p.57 18 Koolhaas R., Small, medium, large, extra-large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture: The Generic City, p.1253

Fig 9.0 Empty shelves in state-run meat shop

Fig 10.0 Iron Gate Estate Wola

FROM CENTRAL PLANNING TO INDIVIDUAL DISREGARD

The state run-factories and shops (Fig 9.0), mass prefabricated blocks of flats (Fig 10.0), and uniformly grey housing estates constituted the uniform landscape of the Soviet Block. In 1949 communists made a first step towards rebuilding Poland as communist, and shortly after, a Six-Year Plan for the Rebuilding of Warsaw was announced, envisaging city through the style of Socialist Realism.19 Other architectural styles were condemned and called bourgeois movements, and the artistic and cultural practices were directed towards unionization and purges, retracking from the traditional orientation towards the West. Copying the model of the Soviet Union, as said the Deputy President at the time, Jakub Berman, was obligatory in every sphere. 20 The primacy of Soviet rule was signified in a gift from Stalin, Palace of Culture built between 1953 and 1955, and resembling stadtkronen found across the Soviet Union. Soviet Union was a constant reference to urban planning in the state, despite revival of modernism in Post-Stalinist architectural practice, which was mirroring the advance of the capitalist West. The first urban planning policy was accepted in 1961 and it relied majorly on the economic strategies.21 1967-73marked the decision to tackle housing shortage, and resulted in the development of new technologies in prefabrication, which quickly became characteristic to the urban fabric of People’s Poland Republic. The next Urban Planning Act of 1984 uphold three sectors involved in planning – national, regional, and local – but ordered a hierarchical consideration of each of them in the process.22 The change in political and social system meant the end of central planning, the end of big architectural companies, and the beginning of the property market, involving new actors and changing existing relationships. The 1984 Planning Act stayed in force at the start of the transformation, but the 1989 system changes required a review. The first significant legislation act was introduced in 1990, when planning authority was handed to parishes, which could function independently to the wider sector.23 This legislation was included in first post-communist 1994 Urban Development Act, which rejected the hierarchy in planning process, and limited the significance and influence of central planning.

The mechanism of directing investment locations was granted to parish, and the planning programs became documents considered through its material and financial aspects. Effectively, this meant that a property owner, through the legislation, had a right to a development on their site through an approach what is not forbidden, is allowed. The on-going privatisation led to formation of developers, a profession non-existent during communism, and to complicating ownership rights with the property market, as the state-owned lands and properties were now on available on the market. Embraced by that process, private interests were put before the public weal.24 The citizen became a consumer, and the space was turned into the commodity.

19 Crowley D. ,Building the World Anew: Design in Stalinist and Post-Stalinist Poland, p.190 20 Ibidem 21 Gorzym-Wilkowski W. A., Pół wieku ewolucji teorii i praktyki planowania przestrzennego w Polsce (1961–2010) p195 22 Legislation Act: Ustawa z 12 lipca 1984 r. o planowaniu przestrzennym (Dz.U. z 1989 r. nr 17, poz. 99, nr 34, poz. 178 i nr 35, poz. 192, z 1990 r. nr 34, poz. 198 i nr 87, poz. 505 oraz z 1993 r. nr 47, poz. 212) 23 Kolipiński B., Planowanie przestrzenne w Polsce w minionym 25-leciu 24 Ibidem p.111

Fig 11.0-2 Plannnig Documents

Fig 12.0 Choatic developments in Wola

In Warsaw, the planning decisions were passed to each of the boroughs, and were no longer handled for the whole city. More than 4,000 formerly city-owned properties or plots of land in Warsaw have been transferred back into private hands since the end of communism.25 From the beginning, the most profitable developments were office buildings and luxury hotels, and -scale commercial edifices. The new investments were welcomed, individual initiative replaced the central control over the urban fabric. The post-communist urban fabric was flooded with unregulated influx of high-rise buildings, free-standing shopping centres, and billboards shaping new needs and desires. Newly built buildings were a product of wild capitalism and openly welcomed globalisation, having little response to the physical substance, to the historical, and to the context.

The new urban elements reflected the present need and present abilities26, liberating themselves from the contextual responsibilities, and from the historical sensitivities. The urban and architectural phenomenon of transformation was concentrating in Wola, where the industrial character of the borough included in Warsaw Planning Act of 1982 (Fig 11.0-11.2) gave the way to a more general guidance from the 1992 act.27 The landscape was changing quickly, and turned its function towards office buildings and housing, turning the borough into an on-going construction site. The constantly starting new projects were reflecting the influx of the money and investments. The vast undeveloped lands around closed factories, pre-war tenant buildings, and soviet housing were crammed with highrise buildings erected densely minimised the green and public space, with their main goal to maximise the profit of investors. During this time hardly any public buildings were built. The attractive location interested many foreign shareholders, aware of the specifics and the needs of the burgeoning market, as seen in a Reform Plaza tower built by a Turkish developer, and the Ilmet skyscraper developed by an Austrian company.

To the palimpsest of borough’s history and architecture, the time of transformation added its own urban layer, liberated from the a prescribed identity. The new urban elements: high-rises, office buildings, billboards, posters, commercial signs, were driven by individual agendas of investors, and stood above the public interest in capitalist Poland. Their focus was on the profit they were meant to bring, and that approach rejected the respect to the past and made them free of contextual reference, turning them into generic elements which could be built anywhere. The prefabricated blocks of flats were often covered with a layer of insulation and plaster, and painted in pastel, turning the greyness of housing estates in explosion of colours. The diversity and uncoordinated style, being added to the borough diminished the presence of the past, and created a spatial chaos (Fig 12.0). Joanna Kusiak in her dissertation Chaos Warsaw: A Cognitive Mapping of the City analyses the term chaos in the urban context of Warsaw. She points out that chaos is a symptom of an unwanted urban alienation, as the public is removed from the impact of the space. Citing an activist slogan We want voice, not chaos, she states that chaos is a contradiction to the collective influence on the space. As in a loop, the generic alienated elements constituting the landscape generated chaos, and that chaos effected in more generic elements.28 25 Davies Ch., ‘They stole the soul of the city’: how Warsaw’s reprivatisation is causing chaos 26 Koolhaas R., Small, medium, large, extra-large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture: The Generic City, p.1250 27 http://www.architektura.um.warszawa.pl/plan1982 28 Kusiak J., Chaos Warszawa: porządki przestrzenne polskiego kapitalizmu, p.89

apartment block Pasaż Saski Śródmiejskiej Spółdzielni Mieszkaniowej 2002 office block Atrium Internation Business Center 1995

unfinished construction of SŚM apartment block (construction started 2012)

Graniczna neighbourhood 2001

office block KróLEWska 2016

apartment block Dom Development 2009 office block Saski office block Crescent Saski Point 2003 1999

PZU Tower 2005

office block Grzybowska Park 2003

apartment block ŚSM 2007

hotel Radisson Blu 2003 apartment blocks hotel Westin 2003

office block Q22 2016

building “filling” built after 1989 Fig 13.0

Fig 14.0 Grzybowska Park

The spatial chaos dominated Warsaw. n Wola (Fig 13.0), on Chlodna Street, Warsaw Trade Tower seemed to consider the context with its sand panels and irregular façade, yet for years it was covered by a few-stories-big poster advertising Matiz cars.29 Grzybowska Street with remains of breweries and factories, with the its East side enclosed in ghetto during the war, with the empty Róża Luksemburg Electric Lamp Factory, with the Le Corbusier inspired soviet Iron-Gate housing estate, gained numerous new commercial developments. Already in the beginning of 90s on the corner with Jan Pawel II Avenue in between residential blocks and with Palace of Culture in the back, a hotel Mercure was built, in its form reminding of a simple box with the residential block around. A 92m PZU Tower rose among housing estates on the other Jan Pawel II corner, and next in construction was the 85m Pekao Tower with its white panelled façade and its logo of an European bison on the roof, which stood by a pre-war tenant house. In 2007 a 94m heigh Hilton Hotel was built, also in between residential buildings. In the same year AIG company was fined 1,6mln zloty (300,000 pounds) for cutting down 45 trees at 5 Grzybowska Street to set a place for an office building, Grzybowska Park (Fig 14.0).

Transformation shifted and amended the character Wola, bringing in more freedom, more investments and money, but it also resulted in chaos and absorption of the historic context.

29 https://studiovk.pl/architektura-warszawy/warsaw-trade-tower/

Fig 15.0 Warszawa Powisle

Fig 16.0 PZU Tower

FROM PAST DECISIONS TO CURRENT CONSEQUENCES

The urban and architectural elements of transformation were influenced by global trends, and set the tone to developments for the next decades. Architectural style was freed from the communist identity and the materials exchanged on soviet market and instead could resemble capitalist buildings across the world. The grey soviet concrete was replaced with curtain walling and reflective glass, which constituted main façade material in commercial developments (Fig 15.0, 16.0). The rapid increase in high-rise construction drew to the modernist tradition and the focus on function instead of the context, but it also embodied the individualistic and unrestricted aspects of postmodernism, seen in more or less bold geometrical shapes and expressions of forms and symbols. Modernist architecture allowed for expression of structure and program, for admiration of technology, and what was started by Mies van de Rohe in Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper in 1920s, rose to became a symbol of Western capitalism, realised in numerous office high-rise buildings. The architectural style of postmodernism, which came as a response to the formality of modern solutions in 1960s, praised the complexity and contradictions of architecture, arguing that there is a need of accommodating variety and communication.29 These two styles, fed on each other, were welcomed during 1990s in the countries opening themselves to capitalism. Architecture described as paratrooper was common, which referred to buildings thrown in the city as an unesthetic descant.30 The size and character of the building was appointed by the availably of the land, and to what point the planning approval would be permissive. This kind of architecture embodied the genericness described by Rem Koolhaas, only considering itself as a context while ignoring the existing reality.

30 Kusiak J., Chaos Warszawa: porządki przestrzenne polskiego kapitalizmu, p.89

Fig 17.1 Yapi Kredi Tower in Stambul

Fig 17.0 Reform Plaza

The term paratrooper was also use to describe imported designs, work of second- or third-ranked Western architects, who worked with foreign developers on projects across the whole country. 31 Vahap Toy, a Turkish designer and entrepreneur, designed a Reform Plaza nearby Wola, which truly embodied in its architecture the character of the transformation. Working with a Turkish developer Sabri Bekdas, Toy came to Poland in 1990s and together they worked on a few developments in Poland, among others proposing a project of Polish Las Vegas in Biala Podlaska, never realised32. One of their projects in Warsaw, a beforementioned Reform Plaza (Fig 17.0-1), was built between 1996 and 1999. With 31 stories and 116m height it became one of the highest buildings in Warsaw at the time, it was built, however, in between 7 floors blocks of flats. Its form of a cylinder merged with a block tower was covered with blue reflective glass and white ceramic tiles, which gained nicknames for the building such as shower cabin and toyi-toyi. The façade was often covered with large-format banners.

The building has an almost twin building in Toy’s city of origin Istanbul, a Yapi Kredi Tower which was finished in 1999.33 31 Majewski, J., Polish Architecture in the Nineties 32 Lesiuk-Klujewska J., Biała Podlaska: Podlaskie Las Vegas Wahapa Toy’a 33 Wiśniewski M., Polskie Las Vegas i szwagier z Corelem: architektura, moda i projektowanie wobec transformacji systemowej w Polsce

Fig 18.0-1 Ilmet Tower

A more descent example of high-rise architecture of the time was an Ilmet Tower (Fig 18.0-1) in Wola, designed by a Croatian architect Miljenko Dumenic, who worked with an Austrian company Ilbau. His architecture drew to modernists exemplars residing in postmodernism, as he also showed in his other buildings in Poland, The Pekao Tower in Wola and an office-hotel complex in Szczecin. The 103m high Ilmet Tower was constructed in 1996 by a housing estate, and has a sculpted, slightly deconstructivist form. The building was cladded in salmon-coloured tiles, with a steel oriel in the façade making it stand out from its neighbours, the top was decorated with a rotating Mercedes star. In 2018, the building was bought by Skanska, who plans to replace it with a high-rise three times the area.

Fig 20.0 Varso Tower under construction

There are people who prefer the shiny genericness from the greyness of communist landscapes. Many Varsovians rooted for new skyscrapers to surpass Palace of Culture in the height race, and many express their support for the city catching up to the current times, as an user peter.fox in comment sections of article announcing new investments on Grzybowska Street, calling the location probably the only contemporary street in Warsaw. Way to go! he writes,36 contrary to other users pointing out to the chaos and canyon-like built up of the street. New developments, however, are still blooming, with numerous new skyscraper plans, including 170m tall building by Altas Estates, a 130m tall Liberty Tower and three 120 to 140m towers by Spanish Grupo Prasa. 37 With the construction of Varso Tower nearing the end in 2021, Palace of Culture loses its place of the tallest in the city, as the Tower is 230 metres tall with an 80m tall spike (Fig 20.0).

Nowadays, skyscraper development in Warsaw is ahead of all other European capitals, both in terms of area and height. Every second skyscraper in Warsaw is being built in Wola, and half a million square metres of office area is currently under construction. 60% of the area still under construction has been already rented.38 Many buildings built during transformation, such as Ilmet Tower, are being demolished to make space for bigger and taller buildings, and older historic buildings are facing similar fate. Taking sites of the old, glazed high-rise buildings become a context for themselves, more and more freed from the past.

36 Wojtczuk M., Ulica Grzybowska zamieniła się w kanion. Będzie kolejny wieżowiec 37 Wojtczuk M., Las wieżowców na Woli: 180 m przy rondzie ONZ 38 https://300gospodarka.pl/news/prawie-co-drugi-wiezowiec-budowany-obecnie-w-warszawie-powstaje-na-woli-to-nowe-city-stolicy

CONCLUSION

Tall, shiny, blue as the sky or grey the clouds. With spikes, with signs, with bold shapes or in a simple form of a box. By themselves, by a street, by a house or by a housing estate. The office high-rise buildings in their glamour, the warmly-welcomed physical expression of capitalism.

Many elements and typologies that entered urban structure during wild capitalism of 1990s, could be understood as generic. High-rise buildings, banners and billboards mentioned in the essay, greenery clearance, pastel colours on concrete blocks of flats, lawlessness in constructions. The aesthetics of transformation were covering the previous character of Warsaw, in a literal way: large-format billboards fixed on soviet blocks, high-rise buildings built in place of factories and tenant houses. The elements of the city became commodified, each trying to be distinguishable and unique to be able sell their product or their space. The economical growth in Poland during transformation, similarly to what was described in Learning from Las Vegas about the city in 1960s, commodified urban fabric, and urban fabric was used to communicate their exceptional value or function. In the accumulation of uniqueness, the unique became generic, and in Warsaw and Wola this was the accumulation of highrise buildings, of banners, of all these new and welcomed urban elements.

The genericness which entered Poland in 1989 derives from complexities of the system transformation: the notion of globalisation, the self-inflicted chaos, liberation from styles and contexts.

The transformation meant a possibility for a change, and that generated new responses contrasting to the established context. State factories were replaced by corporative office blocks, central planning was abolished and made local. As the country opened to globalisation, all the new eclipsed the old. The rush towards profit and freedom overlooked the past, focusing on new abilities and needs that could now be fulfilled through a free market. The privatisation brought properties onto the market, and allowed for investments, largely made by foreign entities. The chaos of political and planning decisions materialised itself in a spatial chaos in Wola. The uncontrolled privatisation and corruption of the time are still deeply impactful on the city and the inhabitants, resulting in unlawful evictions. The public became excluded from decisions on their cities, and multiple activist groups were launched. The lack of central and unified control allowed for individual visions and individual decisions to be favoured over public opinion. The consequence of that is clearly seen on Grzybowska Street, with numerous densely built high-rises among housing block, resulting in its canyon formation. Early demolitions of factories and their replacements with high-rise building allowed for the new architecture of office buildings to gradually overtake historic sites. The liberation from the previously restricted architectural technologies and the freedom in design caused a loss of a unified identity of the city and the borough.

The generic, poetically described by Rem Koolhaas in The Generic City, was becoming a reality in Warsaw through rejecting the historical and the context.

Transformation turned the space into a commodity, owned by developers. The lack of control on their decision resulted in the greenery clearance, as in the case of previously mentioned AIG company and the illegal clearance of 45 trees. Wola changed its function from industrial to a business district, and the land in the area became of an increasingly great value, resulting in recent demolitions of office blocks built in 1990s in order to replace them with taller buildings, as in the case of the Ilmet Tower which will make place for a building with a greater surface area.

The communist rule supressed changes, but the post-communist scene of the Warsaw drew to new visions of the future, inspired by the Western capitalist achievements. High-rise buildings, embodying both the Western world and capitalist freedom became the main investment in the borough of Wola, setting its function and typologies for the following decades. The future of Wola is documented, depicted and imagined in CGIs of shiny office blocks.

Google Street View, Grzybowska Street 2014

Architektura lat dziewięćdziesiątych w Polsce | Artykuł | Culture.pl (no date). Available at: https:// culture.pl/pl/artykul/architektura-lat-dziewiecdziesiatych-w-polsce, https://culture.pl/pl/artykul/ architektura-lat-dziewiecdziesiatych-w-polsce (Accessed: 9 November 2020).

Benjamin, W. (2002) The arcades project. 1st paperback ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Crowley, D. (1994) ‘Building the World Anew: Design in Stalinist and Post-Stalinist Poland’, Journal of Design History, 7(3), pp. 187–203. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1316115 (Accessed: 9 April 2021).

Cymer, A. (no date) Transformacja w soczewce: przemiany warszawskiej Woli, Culture.pl. Available at: https://culture.pl/pl/superartykul/transformacja-w-soczewce-przemiany-warszawskiej-woli (Accessed: 18 January 2021).

Dascălu, D. I. (2014) ‘Individualism and Morality in the Post-communist Capitalism’, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 149, pp. 280–285. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.08.230.

Davies, C. (2017) ‘They stole the soul of the city’: how Warsaw’s reprivatisation is causing chaos, the Guardian. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/dec/18/stole-city-soul-warsawreprivatisation-chaos (Accessed: 9 April 2021).

Definition of GENERIC (no date). Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/generic (Accessed: 8 January 2021).

Eyal, G., Szelényi, I. and Townsley, E. R. (2000) Making capitalism without capitalists: class formation and elite struggles in post-communist Central Europe. London: Verso.

How Eastern Bloc Architects Shaped Cities Across the Third World (no date). Available at: https:// jacobinmag.com/2020/09/soviet-architecture-global-socialism-stanek (Accessed: 9 November 2020).

Jóźwik, R. (2008) ‘Kształtowanie się nowego centrum miasta na terenie warszawskiej dzielnicy Wola.

The formation of a new metropolitan centre in Warsaw’s Wola district.’ Available at: https://suw. biblos.pk.edu.pl/resources/i8/i7/i7/r877/JozwikR_KsztaltowanieNowego.pdf.

Klein, L. (ed.) (2017) Polskie Las Vegas i szwagier z Corelem: architektura, moda i projektowanie wobec transformacji systemowej w Polsce. Wydanie I. Warszawa: Fundacja Kultura Miejsca.

Kolipiński, B. (2014) ‘Planowanie przestrzenne w Polsce w minionym 25-leciu’. Available at: https:// mazowszestudiaregionalne.pl/images/pdf/15/msr_15_kolipinski.pdf.

Koolhaas, R. et al. (eds) (1995) Small, medium, large, extra-large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau. New York, N.Y: Monacelli Press.

Kusiak, J. (2017) Chaos Warszawa: porządki przestrzenne polskiego kapitalizmu. Warsaw: Fundacja Nowej Kultury Bec Zmiana.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig 0.0 https://zamek-krolewski.pl/historia/canaletto Fig 1.0 https://www.notonthehighstreet.com/themotivatedtype/product/live-laugh-love-typographyposter-wall-art Fig 2.0 https://www.wykop.pl/link/1366847/tusk-promuje-polska-rodzine-ze-zdjeciem-irlandzkiejrodziny-w-tle/ Fig 3.0 https://gdansk.fotopolska.eu/zaklady_przemyslowe,428,20/woj.mazowieckie.html Fig 4.0 https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zak%C5%82ady_Wytw%C3%B3rcze_Lamp_Elektrycznych_ im._R%C3%B3%C5%BCy_Luksemburg#/media/Plik:Roza_luksemburg_danieluk_2011.jpg Fig 5.0 google.com/ Fig 6.0-6.3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD6VfPjx8uQ Fig 7.0 Venturi, R., Scott Brown, D. and Izenour, S. Learning from Las Vegas: the forgotten symbolism of architectural form Fig 8.0 usiak J., Chaos Warszawa: porządki przestrzenne polskiego kapitalizmu Fig 9.0 https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiedle_Za_%C5%BBelazn%C4%85_Bram%C4%85 Fig 10.0 https://finanse.wp.pl/handel-w-prl-bo-pieniadze-to-nie-wszystko-6115782468188289g/2 Fig 11.0-2 https://gisplay.pl/urbanistyka/8055-historyczne-plany-zagospodarowania-w-warszawskimgeoportalu.html Fig 12.0 Kusiak J., Chaos Warszawa: porządki przestrzenne polskiego kapitalizmu, p.89 Fig 13.0 https://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/1,34862,15900198,Ulica_Grzybowska_zamienila_ sie_w_kanion__Bedzie_kolejny.html Fig 14.0 https://www.urbanity.pl/mazowieckie/warszawa/grzybowska-park,b268 Fig 15.0 https://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/51,34862,20345690.html?i=0 Fig 16.0 http://www.modzelewskirodek.com.pl/en/pzu-tower/ Fig 17.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Tower Fig 17.1 https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Photos/Yapi-Kredi-Office-Photos-IMG396409.htm Fig 18.0 https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilmet Fig 18.1 http://www.przewodnik.wola.waw.pl/data/other/spacerkiem_powoli_screen.pdf Fig 19.0-3 https://warszawa.wyborcza.pl/warszawa/1,34862,15900198,Ulica_Grzybowska_zamienila_ sie_w_kanion__Bedzie_kolejny.html Fig 20.0 https://eurobuildcee.com/en/news/30879-varso-tower-now-the-eus-tallest Fig 21.0 Google Street View, Grzybowska Street