Iconoclast tendancies...

the Rotunda without the usual advertisement "cladding"

One of Warsaw's most prominent architectural pieces of late modernist architecture is in danger. The Rotunda's current owner, the PKO Bank announced that after an internal architectural competition, the building will be taken down and rebuilt in a new form. The result is quite frighteningly ugly, and is in no way a reevaluation of the old building. Architects of the city are of one opinion. It is an important building for the cities global picture and needs a face lifting. See on gazeta the proposal.
The Internet community is strong and mobile. Facebook users already created a group to save the Rotunda and many other organized movements are on the way. here

The house of the Party is "saved". The current owner, a developer, withdrew it's complaint against the buildings' entry into the registry of monuments. Which he now has to live with it how it is, but is relieved that he will be allowed to locate on the ground floor a Ferrari sales parlor.

The national railway is making headway with their promise to give the train stations of Warsaw (and other cities) the necessary renovations and face lifts. Tender procedures are on the way, and works should start this spring. I can't wait to see a clean Centralna station.

Bus wash

Some time ago I had to let go of a rant about the really terrible state of cleanliness of the public transport buses. The last few weeks were particularly hard on the buses, since the extreme frost prevented a regular cleaning. Which left us with nearly completely caked in vehicles, where you barely had a view through the windows. But this weekend's seen warmer temperatures and so up to 300 of the 1400 buses in service were put through the standard cleaning process. A big washing robot like we know for cars, just a loooot bigger. read up about it here on gazeta.pl
Let us see where we are going...

Frozen water lilies

Frozen Vistula 2, originally uploaded by michknu.

Behold the river is stiff...the ongoing cold spell that keeps Warsaw solidly in its merciless grip managed to freeze the river over. It is an amazing thing to see, and to observe that what seems stiff is actually a kinetic masterpiece of nature. While from far it looks all white, at closer look the surface reveals to be completely fractured. All the splintered parts spin like a thousand carousels at excruciating slow speed and ricochet off one another, bruising their sides and creating a beautiful spectacle of winter water lilies.

The long march

It is a thing which Zurich and Warsaw share, the underground connection on the train station. I thought as I was walking along the dimly lit corridor, barely dodging the dense crowd of heavily dressed passerbys. I had seconds ago plunged down into one of the many arms of the giant octopus which is the under world connecting the five corners of the city center with the main stations platform. The entrance on the side of the palace of culture has recently been renovated. I noticed the new un-evenly laid stone on the walls. The face-lift did enhance my feeling of safety I mumble under my freezing breath. Its terribly cold by the way. Now in winter the temperature sometimes drops to minus 2o degrees Celsius.
Progressing in the fare reaching ramifications, I find it difficult to breath. Most or actuall all the time, there is a dense wall of intensive smells hitting you straight in your clean face. Old oil or other cooking emanations that make you wanna puke. But you keep on pressing deeper, to finally access the central core of the Rhizome. I pass many stands, and shops, its cold and I cannot help but wonder how those people stand working here, 8 hours a day in the breathtaking stench and freezing cold. Soon all those tenants will have to leave and find a new place to sell their goods, if the national railway has it's way. The PKP decided to finally begin with the promised rejuvenation of the only 30 year old terminal. Its about time. On the right a guy hollers, he wants to sell his stuff and get out of here. Another threatened existence. But they'll make it, I reassure myself. And look forward to a time without the stale heavy atmosphere of abandon, which rampantly has invaded the undergrounds, and generally all the places where the small trades had their home. All has to be removed in the name of progress and shopping malls. The small either join or go.
On the right hand side there is a newer part of the tunnel. Nice stone on the walls and floor. What is that parallel world? I wonder and push on in that direction, just to find out that it is actually a part of the new shopping mall, the golden terraces, that has infiltrated the space of the station. On this side, dirt and the sound of one armed bandits, on the other side of the revolving glass door, the sparkling world of commerce. Ad Majore Commerce. I wont go there today, i have to catch a train. so long

a way to reduce smog

The Trolleybus. Find some info about Warsaw's electrically powered buses on wikipedia. Look at a map of the different lines. visit a site dedicated to the Warsaw trolleybus history.
Long history told short, they were canceled due to silly political issues and could now be reinstalled as a good alternative to the metro system which still is in its infancy. More environment friendly from many points of view, they would provide an interesting solution for our smog-in cities.

The dispute which sees a housing estate developer clash with the unpartial city council rages on, as the said investor tries to sue the city for his loss and remove the implemented site development plan. The story in polish on gazetta. english google translate.

Too salty for me...

Article on gazeta.pl here and another on the TA here as well as t-online here

The winter started early and its without question one of the hardest winters in a long time. Snow falls almost incessantly for several days, and the road administration authority (RAA) sees itself in front of a huge problem, a certain conflict of interests so to say. On one hand they have the duty to clean and maintain the roads clean of snow so as to provide the safe ride drivers expect (and the law dictates). On the other they have the enormous cost of doing so on the scale of a big city, looming over them like a big Damocles sword (Warsaw spent 60mln. zł so far this year). The preferred means to achieve "black roads" is to melt the snow with the help of sodium chloride a.k.a. salt. It has the advantage of being dirt cheap and effective. Factors which seem - in the eyes of the RAA - to be good enough not to give a damn about it's evil side effects. Salt has the bad habit of damaging roadside trees by drying them out. In spring when the tree will want to start to pump water to produce the sap and the leaves, it can't do so because the available water is a saturated salty brew. Try drinking that, believe me you wont be able even to swallow (memories of ocean trips...)
So we have damaged trees, but also salt corrodes the cars and damages the streets. It's a huge problem, as the amount of press and denbate shows. There are plenty of alternative to salt, just they apparently never make the cut, because of expense. The nearest alternative to salt, which is small stones called "split", is more expensive and it has to be gathered after winter, or otherwise it will clog the sewage system by layering on the bottom and preventing the flow of things (alligators and other).
Warsaw is not in an isolated situation, all across Europe the same things are written and debated. The Tages Anzeiger of Zurich almost wrote an identical article than our local Gazeta on the topic. The TA proposes may alternative which have been tested over the last years, but are not widely used.
I propose that the various road administrations in Europe meet-up to debate and find a common environmentally sustainable solution to the snow problem. Many countries (Austria and Slovakia) are salt less, and they would be able to give first hand recounts of their strategies against the winterly foe.

At the gallery

This interesting piece of equipment - a trainer for small boys - is in fact a part of a very controversial installation by the artist Zbigniew Libera. He is not unknown in the field of critical art as he is the author of the lego concentration camp piece. He gets his second retrospective now at the zachęta gallery in warsaw. Worth a visit in any case just for the penis extender installation