Spatial Politics of Comfort — Krakow, Nowa Huta

Intergenerational cross-section studying spatial adaptation of each generation to a next stage of ever-evolving urban paradigm. / affiliated with Spatial Politics of Comfort

As a part of the Communist propaganda of the 1950s, district Nowa Huta in Krakow has been dubbed Poland’s ‘first Socialist city’. One of the politically most significant planning projects in Central and Eastern Europe issued a new model of society — socialist modernity. It was represented by a new prototype

of a citizen, a rural migrant transformed into a socialist worker, adopting a new lifestyle and actively engaging in building of the collective commonwealth.

Employees of the adjunct factory (Lenin Steelworks) entered an experimental reality governed by ideology, participating on a vision of ‘building socialism’ in ways not anticipated by the authorities. The standardized architectural typology of the housing units offers a new type of comfort and re-shapes the understanding of spatial luxury for the workers moving from villages or substandard urban housing. Over decades, three generations of Nowa Huta inhabitants — from war generation to children of post-socialism re-create and adapt the spatial scheme of the 1950s Stalinism.

Spatial luxury in ‘classless’ society

From the materialistic point of view, being capable of reaching a specific higher status is usually based on financial possibilities resulting from being a member of

certain social class which is in direct conflict with the socialist model of a classless society. Socialism adopted a standpoint where the equality and collective well-being based on providing the same amount of goods for everybody was the main goal, which in its core is basically a denial of existence of luxury.