location: warsaw, poland
time: 1960-70s

next to wilanów palace, the polish versailles.

land of the pastels, bathrooms, balconies. green trees, concrete overpasses, loud city highways.

the diplomat housing estate.

the glass covered staircases.

the riverside and the polish caramel candies.

land of the early nineties, the memories before our birth.

the rain.

the future.

(the elite: here the 70s urban space starts to recall some desperate housewives scene. or, in this light, a bit of tel-aviv.)

location: warsaw, poland
time: 1977

it is wonderful again: since the estate is built by the housing cooperative gocław airport, the four subdistricts of gocław are named of different polis aircraft pieces:

iskra (spark)
jantar (amber)
orlik (eagle)
wilga (oriole) 

a secret sentence about socialism written into the urban landscape.

and in the middle of the estate there is a lake called BALATON!

location: warsaw, poland
time: 1980

going further on the bus, we arrive to a land even more out of reality. this is the postwar world of pastel lights reflecting eternal greyness. greyness is usual everywhere in warsaw, but here it looks like the official atmosphere ordered by the commanders of the neighbourhood. houses are tall and continue in endless fragmented structures, the strong aesthetic order of the elements which is a characteristic of all the concrete blocks is especially significant here.

and street names are written on the concrete walls with big letters, giving a title for every single artwork constructing this living reality.

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.

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.

location: warsaw, poland
time: 1975-80 

chomiczówką, chomiczówką, pierwsze wino, pierwsza wódka, mean that anything, (obviously something with vodka)

that song shows that there should be some character in this neighbourhood, but i didn’t experience so much of that. it was just a new example of colorful toy cities arisen from rehabilitation programs or the planner’s fantasy. but nothing significantly original. anyway, it looks pretty amazing on this photo, so maybe i was in too much of hurry (i just stepped of from an urban activist workshop, where i had the task to make beetroot paint), and didn’t discover the exciting parts.

but there are some nice picture, where concrete blocs become pastel scenes of fairy tales,

where the essence of warsaw housing feeling, the light green walls and rich vegetation are in present,

and some harder contours.