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modernism

Kolorobloki

By All Works, architecture, modernism, photomontage

Emalite glass is a synthetic opaque and multicoloured glass that appeared in the 1950s. Inserted in aluminium frames, it is used to cover the facades of buildings with modular panels of any requested colour. Its simplicity of use as well as its modularity account for its popularity in the 60s and 70s in Western Europe and in the countries of the socialist bloc. However, emalite glass does not age well, and is often replaced by other covering material, not as colourful.

Kolorobloki comprises a series of photographs of emalite glass covered buildings. These photographs are composed in a modular way, i.e. using the modularity of the emalite glass panels as they are used as a construction material. Thus, although all the buildings are, in real life, different, their photographs have been manipulated so that their facades have all the same proportions and the same number of floors. Some buildings have been shortened, while others have been enlarged, by adding the required number of modular panels. The only unaltered motif in these photographs is the colour of the façade. From a certain perspective, emalite glass panels are one of the last heirs of the modernist tradition in architecture, where simplicity and functionality are cardinal values. Modularity, from this point of view, is one architectural feature best suited to building something functional and cheap, but also maybe elegant. Nevertheless, as far as emalite glass is concerned, given the poor quality of the materials used, one often faces a kind of degenerate modernism.

However, Kolorobloki is not a criticism of modernism in architecture, on the contrary. It is a project that uses the grammar of modernism to show its limitations, but with a great dose of sympathy for that architecture as well as for the buildings photographed

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Lithuanian Bus Stops

By All Works, architecture, modernism

Lithuanian roads have one, very typical, architectural feature: it is their countless bus shelters, with their clean, simple and multicoloured design. These bus stops are spread all over the country and were built in the 1960s and 1970s. There are approximately 30 different models of bus stops to be found in Lithuania. Built from prefabricated materials, they were then placed in the countryside, and painted in vivid colours.

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The Glass House

By All Works, photographic objects, modernism

The Glass House has two distinct and yet somewhat similar inspirations.

First, I had been interested in the facade of the Polish National Bank, seen at night, and especially its windows, which showed the most exuberant and diverse display of plants. It looks like an extraordinary burst of green life, brought and kept to life in an austere and brutal environnment.

Second, I found the idea of the Glass House, in 20th century architecture theory and practice, very attractive. To me it summed up the beauty and utopian character of modernism. On the one hand, it was an idea progressive and distopian at the same time : glass thought as a way to improve humanity’s living conditions, but also as a means to control it. On the other hand, all modern buildings nicknamed “glass houses”, were nearly always thought of as great architectural achievements, but impossible to live in.

The Glass House merges these two inspirations into a single photographic piece.

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The Embassy

By All Works, architecture, documentary, modernism

The Embassy project is a semi-fictional semi-documentary series of photographs of an embassy of an Eastern European country of the former COMECON. The photographs were indeed all taken in a real Eastern European unused embassy, however it has been chosen to modify slightly some of them, in order to produce confusion in the viewer’s mind as to wether what he is watching is true or not. The viewer is thus invited in a slightly Kafkaesque journey through empty offices which become more and more claustrophobic and unreal. In a reference to the Cold War diplomatic habits of manipulation, as well as to the former soviet bloc’s use of photomontage, these photographs are seeminlgly documentary, ergo objective, whereas in reality the viewer will never know if what he sees is true or not, truthful or manipulated.

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The Glass Trap

By All Works, mirrors, modernism, site-specific

In the heart of a deserted office building, Nicolas Grospierre has recreated a dreamlike winter garden. For a few days, before the picturesque, glass and metal structure is destroyed, the artist has devised in its core an illusory and infinite space. The Glass Trap is an attempt at capturing the fleeting soul of a soc-modernist pyramid placed on its head.
The Glass Trap is a premiere for Nicolas Grospierre inasmuch as he has willingly put aside his primary medium, photography, to create a living picture. The extraordinary, illusory winter garden set inside an abandoned 1980’s office building that will shortly be destroyed is a typical site specific installation inspired by the venue, and imagined as an addendum to its history. The glass cube filled with plants is the only living element in a building destined for destruction. The installation is at the same time a kind of mental emergency exit, but also as an amazing kaleidoscope opening in front of the very eyes of the viewer an endless space full of vegetation, in the heart of a massive but absurd (because built upside down) pyramid.
Grospierre finds once again some potential in a meaningful but abandoned and forgotten place, in this way filling up the alternative topography of the city with yet another unsuspected and surprising situation. The meaning and great strength of the artist’s practice lies in his ability to get under the city’s skin and emphasising the idea that a significant aspect of the city is also the space hidden behind the enigmatic facades of the buildings. In this way, Grospierre expands the notion of public space, immersing in an urban game not only us, viewers, but also intimate office spaces, libraries, and administrations.

Lukasz Gorczyca

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K-Pool i Spółka

By All Works, architectural fantasies, modernism, photomontage

Rem Koolhas, in Delirious New York, ends his book by an imaginary tale about Russian avant-guarde architects, who escaped the Soviet Union to reach New York. The decision to escape the USSR was made in the 1930’s, and the means of transportation was a floating swimming pool, which, when all the architects were swimming synchronically, would move in the opposite direction. Thus, swimming towards Moscow, they only reached Manhattan in the mid-1970’s. Unfortunately for them, the Manhattan of the 70’s had little to do from what they had dreamed of at the onset of their journey.
It is this moving, wonderful and absurd endeavor that inspired me to create K-Pool. K-Pool stands for Koscisuko Pool, an open air swimming pool in Brooklyn, NY (built in 1958-60 by Morris Lapidus), whose intricate design and incredible shapes I used to re-create Rem Koolhas’ vision.

K-Pool i Spółka (which could be translated as “K-Pool and company”), juxtaposes this imaginary swimming pool with real achievements of Soviet Union architects, the very colleagues of those who decided to flee the USSR. While these were swimming, back home, they were erecting astonishing buildings. But also swimming pools, which now, for the majority of them, rest unused, as a final irony to this visual journey.

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Hydroklinika

By All Works, architecture, documentary, modernism

The balneological hospital of Druskinnikai in Lithuania, designed by A. and R. Silinskas was built in 1976-81. Having served for merely 20 years, it was shut down and destoyed in 2005, to be replaced by a (probably more) profitable water-amusement park. Hydroklinika is an attempt at documenting the hospital through a global, objective and systematic approach. Therefore, no part of the building, was neglected and all were photographed likewise.

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