varissuo

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location: turku, finland
time: 1970s, 1980s

i was traveling all the afternoon. infinite curves and spirals in this mediocre port city. then i’ve seen these houses finally, and got off from the bus. varissuo was built on a meadow. the finnish people call it a problematic district. 32 percent of the inhabitants are immigrants. i am walking in a dreamlike ghetto in new york. finally something with meaning. the moomins definitely don’t live here, maybe the groke at best. pine trees and high rises merge into the dusk, people switch on the lights in their windows, all of them is a reminder, home is where the heart is far away.

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ursynów

location: warsaw, poland
time: 1977

it’s easy to say ursynów, although it is an unforeseeble area of different housing estates, where innumerable buses carry the passengers to unknown places. ursynów never ends, or the buses have round lines.


ghetto and garden city in one.

i have a hunch that it was the greyest place i’ve ever been, or i just don’t remember to romania anymore.

and this place consists of the most melodic streetnames, that generates nice synesthetic experiences in our mind. and there is a bartók béla street, which composes an interesting contrast with the budapest one.

warsaw is the city of trees and concrete. a city of may and rain, doesn’t matter when are we going there. but we can’t really miss it, light conditions around the central station are frighteningly similar in may and december. these pictures were taken in july. it’s kind of a solidity.

when the housing estates in warsaw were built in the years of oppression, one of the chief architects’ wife committed suicide in the bathtub. since then bathrooms in warsaw housing blocks are smelling like a fairy’s forgotten bathwater. conduits are not fogetting.

besides the magic forests, yellow and green houses are also very usual here. and the shades change in every block.

the next part of ursynów is blue for a change, and quotes greek villages. it doesn’t worth to give up dreaming at all.

piaski

location: warsaw, poland
time: 1970s


we don’t know anything about this place except that piasków means sand, which shows the less creative sort of naming, and that it is located next to chomiczówka, separated by a nice tram track.

at some point i could even experience that kind of sacralized space which sometimes appears in a random corner of conrete blocks, always next to the trees.

inside the block follow less interesting pastel houses with a summer garden feeling.