Railway stations in Warsaw and Katowice, Poznań’s Okrąglak, the Meteorological Observatory on Śnieżka, Warsaw’s Chemistry Pavilion and Supersam, and finally the recently famous Emilia and Cracovia. According to some, these are buildings that deserve admiration and appreciation, while others consider them hideous communist barracks that should be razed to the ground. Why are they so controversial? What were the circumstances of their construction and why do some of them no longer exist? Has the status of this architecture changed in the years since the book was first published, and how?
Badly Born is a fascinating story not only about the bizarre fates of the buildings, but also about their creators. The pages of the book feature portraits of leading figures of Polish architecture, including Marek Leykam, Henryk Buszko and Aleksander Franta, Jerzy Hryniewiecki, Zofia and Oskar Hansen, Mieczysław Król, Halina Skibniewska, Jerzy Sołtan. Filip Springer presents them as flesh-and-blood people, tries to understand their motivations and creative attitudes, and shows how they realised their ideas in the system of a command economy. The book is illustrated with over two hundred colour photographs - both archival and contemporary - documenting the current state of the once icons of modernity.
The book is the result of the project Badly Born, co-authored by the architect Marek Wozniczka.
publisher: WYDAWNICTWO KARAKTER
