Architecture as a tool of capital
A celebration of the 50th issue of “Autoportret. Pismo o dobrej przestrzeni”

  • Architecture as a tool of capital

The starting point for the discussion will be an article by Reinier de Graaf published in the latest issue of "Autoportret”, titled “Architecture as a tool of capital”.

De Graaf writes: “If before the 1970s (roughly speaking) buildings were primarily regarded as (public) expenditure, after the 1970s buildings became mostly a means of revenue - which fact ironically only contributed to further downward pressure on construction budgets. Once discovered as a form of capital, there is no choice for buildings but to operate according to the logic of capital. In that sense there may ultimately be no such thing as Modern or Postmodern architecture, but simply architecture before and after its annexation by capital.

Recent decades have seen the emergence of a new sobriety, a new Modernism, at least in aesthetic terms. But how modern is the modern architecture of today? Modernism had a rational programme: to share the benedictions of science and technology, universally. Recent decades have shown, that modern architecture can easily be deployed to work against its original ideology. Once buildings are identified as a means of return, modern architecture’s ‘economy of means’ is no longer a way to reach the largest number of people, but a way to maximise profits.

The same repertoire of rational production, the incorporation of industrial products, the celebration of the 90-degree angle and the aesthetics of sobriety that once made buildings affordable, now make buildings ‘cheap’. Marketing plays a crucial role here. Once Modernism can freely be reinterpreted as a style rather than an ideology, it becomes relatively easy to dissociate a (high) selling price from a (low) cost base and reap record profits as a result.”

We are asking questions about modernism, its conditioning and contexts in a time of crisis in architecture, when any value of space is being capitalized. Apartments became the subject of speculation instead of a human right. A return to the optimism of inter-war projects is definitely no longer possible, but a change in the contemporary paradigm is necessary.

Bogna Świątkowska - founder of the Bęc Zmiana New Culture Foundation, where her work included a number of interdisciplinary projects, such as New Urban Design, Synchronicity, Free/Slow University of Warsaw and Expectative. Promoter of young Polish art, architecture and design. Curator and co-curator of exhibitions organized as part of the Synchronicity project. Founder and publisher of culture magazine "Notes na 6 tygodni”. Co-founder of “Format P”, an experimental humanities magazine.

Marta Karpińska - graduate of art history at the University of Warsaw, editorial assistant at “Autoportret. Pismo o dobrej przestrzeni” magazine. Co-curator of “Impossible Objects” (an exhibition for the Polish Pavilion at the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2014) and “Monument. The Architecture of Adolf Szyszko Bohusz” (Zachęta National Gallery of Art, 2014). Author of a monograph on Wacław Nowakowski (Instytut Architektury, 2015). Board member of the Instyut Architektury foundation.

Dorota Leśniak-Rychlak - editor in chief of “Autoportret. Pismo o dobrej przestrzeni” quarterly, curator of architecture exhibitions such as „Zamieszkanie 2012. Miasto ogrodów, miasto ogrodzeń”, Impossible Objects (Polish Pavilion at the 14th Venice Biennale of Architecture) and “Monument. The Architecture of Adolf Szyszko Bohusz”. Co-founder of the Instyut Architektury foundation.

Maciej Miłobędzki - architect, graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology. Between 1984 and 1988 he worked at Spółdzielnia Pracy Twórczej Architektów i Artystów Plastyków (architects and artists’ creative work cooperative). Co-founder of architecture firm JEMS Architekci. Since 2008 he has been a teacher at the Faculty of Architecture at the Warsaw University of Technology. Laureate of the Association of Polish Architects’ Honorary Award (2002).

Marcin Wicha - graphic designer. He has designed covers, posters and graphic symbols. He sometimes writes. His texts have appeared in “Autoportet”, “Literatura na Świecie” and “Tygodnik Powszechny” among others. For several years he drew weekly commentary cartoons for “Tygodnik Powszechny”. He works with “Gazeta Wyborcza” and “Charaktery”. He published several children's books, as well as “Jak przestałem kochać design” (”How I stopped loving design”, Karakter 2015).