Filmoteka Muzeum

The concept of the Linear Continuous System (LCS), developed since the mid-1960s, was an application of the theory of Open Form on the macro scale. In response to the prognosis of Poland’s rapid demographic development, the Hansens proposed to replace old centric cities with four multifunctional settlement belts stretching from the Tatra Mountains to the Baltic Sea.

The belts, combining residential, social, transportation and light industrial zones, were supposed to provide all their inhabitants with a good quality of life with equal access to culture and nature, as well as the possibility of individual expression (e.g., in the Western Belt project proposed for the city of Lubin and its surroundings, the inhabitants were encouraged to construct their houses by themselves on the terraces provided by the architects).

The LCS, which could only be realised in a socialist state with a centrally-planned economy and common grounds, was discussed at the meetings of the ‘Polska 2000’ committee as one possibility for Poland’s spatial development.

The Hansens alluded to this concept in their designs for housing estates: the Juliusz Słowacki Housing Estate in Lublin and the Przyczółek Grochowski Housing Estate in Warsaw, Poland, as well as in Oskar Hansen and Svein Hatløy’s contribution to the PREVI Experimental Housing Project in Lima, Peru.