SPRINGER Filip - Badly Born. Reports on the architecture of communist Poland

The 2012 book of the year by Radio Three! Railway stations in Warsaw and Katowice, Poznań's okrąglak, the meteorological observatory on Śnieżka, Warsaw's Chemistry Pavilion and Supersam... Icons of modernist architecture of the communist era. According to some - buildings deserving admiration and appreciation, according to others - hideous communist barracks that should be razed to the ground. Why do they arouse such controversy? What were the circumstances of their construction and why do some of them no longer exist? Badly Born is a fascinating story not only about the bizarre fate of the buildings, but also about their creators. On the pages of the book appear portraits of leading figures of Polish architecture, including Marek Leykam, Henryk Buszko and Aleksander Franta, Jerzy Hryniewiecki, Zofia and Oskar Hansen, Mieczyslaw Król, Halina Skibniewska. Filip Springer presents them as flesh-and-blood people, tries to understand their motivations, creative attitudes and shows how they implemented their ideas in the system of the command economy. The whole book is illustrated with nearly 200 color photographs - archival and contemporary taken by the author, documenting the current state of the once icons of modernity.

The book is not a documentation of the most outstanding objects of postwar modernism in Poland. It does, however, include buildings that raise questions representative of the entire architecture of that period. Walking through the Żoliborskie Orchards, one cannot help but wonder how Halina Skibniewska managed to design a housing development so different from the large-panel apartment blocks. And were Poles really condemned to these block housing estates? Trying to understand the concepts of Zofia and Oskar Hansen, it's hard not to imagine what Poland would have looked like if someone had really listened to them then, in the 1970s. (from the introduction).

Karakter Publishing House, Krakow, 2011

Format: 250 x 195 mm, 270s.

Very good condition

A treat for architecture connoisseurs.