Museum of Architecture in Wroclaw and the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning invite you to a discussion about #architectureporn around books: “Warszawa Gutta” by Błażej Pindor and “Modern Forms” and “Modern Spaces” by Mikołaj Grospierre.
Similarly to the popular #foodporn or #cabinporn hashtags, the #architectureporn works. Watching modern architecture has become fashionable and enjoyable - largely thanks to photography. Today, demolition of buildings by means of a camera goes beyond the frames of a document, provides aesthetic elevations, but it is also sometimes a tool for critical reflection. The remarkable increase in popularity of architectural photography translates into a growing number of book and album publications. We will discuss them, as well as a critical and uncritical view of modernist architecture, hastily stolen frames and long-term, photographic adoration of buildings, photogenic architecture and photography, which measures up to the architectural landscape. How social media and new institutions are changing contemporary architecture photography. The pretext for the meeting and conversation is the recently released album “Warszawa Gutta” by Błażej Pindor (published by the Raster Foundation and NIAiU), as well as books by Mikołaj Grospierre (Modern Forms and Modern Spaces, published by Prestel). The meeting will be attended by the initiators of Fotoklub, publishers and curators Łukasz Gorczyca and Adam Mazur, as well as the photographer Błażej Pindor.
“Warszawa Gutta” is the first album publication devoted to the work of Romuald Gutt - one of the most important Polish architects of the 20th century, a precursor of organic architecture, the author of characteristic grey brick buildings, public utility buildings and residential buildings. The vast majority of Gutt’s projects were created in Warsaw, co-creating from the 1920s a new, modernist shape of the capital. These works inspired and inspire subsequent generations of architects.
The book, while preserving the character of the monograph, is above all an original, visual interpretation of Gutt’s architecture. Its main part is a unique photographic series of Błażej Pindor, which is both documentary and artistic in character. The photographs show architecture from many unobvious perspectives, in details and in the contemporary urban context. Here photography is a tool for a meticulous reconstruction of Romuald Gutt’s architectural language and a critical analysis of the life of modernist architecture in the changing socio-economic conditions. The album part is complemented by texts by practitioners and historians of architecture and photography: Anna Dybczyńska-Bałuszko, Łukasz Gorczyca and Bolesław Stelmach. “Warsaw Gutta” is the sixth volume in the Raster Foundation’s publishing series dedicated to the modernist heritage of the capital. Like previous publications, it combines the original content with the care and nobleness of the editorial form.
Błażej Pindor
WARSZAWA GUTTA
Teksty: Anna Dybczyńska-Bułyszko, Łukasza Gorczyca i Bolesław Stelmach
Redakcja: Łukasz Gorczyca
Współpraca: Karolina Andrzejewska
Projekt graficzny: Michał Kaczyński
Wydawcy: Fundacja Raster i Narodowy Instytut Architektury i Urbanistyki, Warszawa 2018
210 x 280 mm, 192 strony, oprawa twarda płócienna
Nakład: 1000 egzemplarzy
ISBN 978-83-946849-7-6 / 978-83-951542-1-8
Premiera 21 listopada 2018