Chasing History - building for the traveling resident. Antonina Cagara April 1, 2008 (Second Draft)

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1 Chasing History - building for the traveling resident. Antonina Cagara April 1, 2008 (Second Draft) Supervisor: Howard Davies The tourist industry in Poland is bound to become a significant component of the country s everyday culture. An informal culinary institute, together with a hotel and a generous public space will be located in a site adjacent to the main railway terminal of the city of Poznan, on a site that already houses an abandoned train platform built in Heritage buildings carry a tremendous weight of embodying the burdens of Polish history. Their treatment and reintegration into the modern urban fabric are issues that must be considered in order to ensure that their meaning is not lost in translation. Time based media such as film and photography will be used to discover the different perceptions of heritage architecture in order to convey that it forms the most important component of the process of blending of the interface between the tourist and the local.

2 2 Thesis Premise: The Local Resident as a Tourist. Poznan, the fourth largest city in Poland is positioned in a strategic location in the western part of the country, on one of the most important European railway corridors, joining Berlin with Warsaw and Moscow. The tourist industry has always been intense in this city and is expected to flourish even further due to many initiatives of the Government of the European Union to promote cultural dialogues between its member countries. The site of the project, an abandoned train platform located meters away from the main terminal is conducive to the exploration of the spatial interface between the tourist and the resident as well as their perception of historical architecture. A hybrid program housed in a heritage building, composed of a small hotel and an informal culinary institution will serve as the initial point of contact between the tourist and the local. Through such direct interaction the project will examine the perception of heritage space from foreigner s perspective who travels to see it, versus that of a local resident who confronts it everyday. By inhabiting a heritage building which had been standing abandoned for years, the project will operate on the premise that architecture carries a heavy load of responsibility in reconciling the past with the present. Time based media, such as film and photography will be used to produce artifacts speaking of the nature of historical spaces of both domestic and foreign origins and the modes of their appropriation by different people. This investigation will inform the degree of overlap between architecture of the past, the present and the future.

3 3 Primary Area of Study: Building a Historical Interface. The condition of the Polish nation was well described by a polish political activist Adam Michinik who expressed the calamity of his country to be the falling into total amnesia and amnesty of going forward, while carrying the burden of the recent history (Grudzinska-Gross, 385). The project aims to address the question of how this forgiveness and rejection of history relates to the idea of generating new architecture of democratic Poland which must coexist with the old, historically charged buildings. The work of the German artist Anselm Kiefer provides inspiration for further explanation of this mechanism of dealing with issues of the past. His art expresses the concern with the issue of post-world war II German Identity. He explained that art is a vehicle by which to have a dialogue with history. An artist can enact a coming-to-terms with the worst transgressions of the past (Arasse). Kiefer uses the creative process to ease his anxiety about confronting the past. To do so he superimposes images that relate to historical events with those of daily use that transgress cultural differences- generic articles of clothing, ceramics, books or images of landscape (Figure 1). His struggle to relate back to his roots provokes questioning of whether it is fair to reject history and what are the factors that determine if something is historically important. The tourist is targeted in the project to act as a medium in the confrontation of these issues, as foreigners present themselves with a heightened awareness of their presence that is either free of historical prejudices, or charged with pre-existing ones. More sources to be added as a definition of a tourist will be explored.

4 4 Program: An Hybrid Institution. The project will establish a hybrid program of a small hotel and an informal culinary institute to create a realm for the interaction of tourists and local residents. The hotel will act as a temporary home to people in transit or visiting the city, whereas the culinary institute will be a forum for the propagation of Polish cooking traditions. Through the nature of consumption and inquiry about food, the program will activate the interface between the two groups represented by the tourist and the local. HOTEL - The foreigner s home. PUBLIC SPACE - The interface. CULINARY INSTITUTE - The domestic premises. HOTEL (660 m 2 ) lobby 160 m 2 rooms 500 m 2 PUBLIC SPACE (465 m 2 ) restaurant 80 m 2 exhibition hall 2 80 m 2 ingredients shop 80 m 2 conference room 30 m 2 exhibition hall 3 80 m 2 conference room 15 m 2 media library 100 m 2 CULINARY INSTITUTE (688 m 2 ) administration 48 m 2 outdoor garden 100 m 2 classrooms 500 m 2 parking (underground, 50 cars min) change rooms 20 m 2 washrooms 20 m 2 TOTAL 1813 m 2

5 5 Site: The Persona non Grata. The project s site is an abandoned railway terminal built in 1912 and its immediate surroundings. It was constructed with the intention of being worthy of receiving a special guest into the city, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. The building was truly important to the occupier (the Germans), yet it meant nothing to the Polish nation. The structure was in use for a brief period in the 1920s, but eventually, the structure was allowed to deteriorate (Figure 2 and 3). The platform itself is 70 meters long by 8 meters wide and the adjacent pavilion located in the middle, is 11 by 15 meters large. The space accommodated a large welcoming committee, an orchestra, city officials and all other service personnel. It was never intended to host regular trains; hence neither ticket counter nor large public waiting area was provided. The most unique aspects of this site, apart from its purpose, is its current location in the context of the city, adjacent to many cultural and business centers (Figure 4). Its configuration with respect to the main railway terminal ensures significant influx of people as anticipated by the project.

6 6 Mode of Production: Film Collage. The tactic to be used throughout the project will involve a production of photographic and cinematographic documentation that depicts the perception of historic spaces from the point of view of a tourist and a local. Time based media will be used as a device to single out the behavior of people in a foreign setting and to inquire about their appropriation of the local environment. Techniques similar to Keifer s approach of juxtaposing historical images with universal objects of everyday use will be employed in order to reveal that architecture, as well as art, is a vehicle for reconciliation of the past with the present, and that it can be used to make projections into the future.

7 7 Conclusion: The Osmosis. In the context heritage architecture and the project s site, the authors of Identity by Design confirm that what matters [ ] is not hardware of buildings, streets and green spaces in themselves, so much as what these mean to people (Butina Watson, Bentley, 4). With the event of Poland joining the European Union, and even more recently, becoming part of the Schengen State, the physical eradication of borders seemed to have destroyed the mental membrane separating Poland from the rest of Europe. This project examines the relationship between tourists and locals and their perception of historical spaces in order to asses how architecture contributes to the flow of time from the past into the future. To do so, a hybrid program of an informal culinary school, a hotel and public space will be implemented to establish a continuous influx of tourists to function as a renewable resource. The resulting interactions will be informed by the discoveries made through the construction of photo- and cinematographic artifacts showing the impact of historical images with instances of daily use.

8 8 Committee and Resources I intend to travel to Italy and Poland in order to study the techniques employed in rehabilitation of historic buildings. I will also gather photographic and cinematographic materials to use in the documentation process of the theoretical discourse the production of arguments supporting my thesis (MOP). While in Poznan, I am also planning to contact the Bureau of Heritage Conservation as well as the administration of the main railway station in order to inquire about the past and current state of the building on the project s site. Any engineering/structural issues will be resolved with the help of a Polish structural engineer who deals with sites listed as heritage.

9 9 List of Primary Sources Arasse, Daniel. Anselm Kiefer. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, The author traces the career of the German artist. The publication includes the analysis of Kiefer s significant body of work and includes interviews with the artist which provides a direct insight into his artistic philosophy. Mazurczak, Jan. "Dworzec Cesarski Tutej.pl. 2 Jul < The internet article publishes a detailed history of the Railway Building, along with its photographs from various points in time. Its documentation is approached from an objective point of view, hence it is free of personal interpretation. The photographs published allow for an in-depth analysis of the majestic quality of the building as well as its use throughout time. Note: further bibliography on tourism will be added pending further research.

10 10 List of Secondary Sources Butina Watson, Georgia, Bentley, Ian. Identity by Design. Burlington, Massachusetts: Elsevier Ltd Collins, Peter. The Gastronomic Analogy. Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture. Montreal, Quebec: McGill Queen s University Press, Grudzinska-Gross, Irena. Mickiwicz and the Question of Sacred Territory. Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and Their Aftermath. Hungary: Central European University Press, Kalinowski, Wojciech. The Development of Polish Architecture as Seen Through the Nation Wide Program of Historic Preservation. Proceedings of the Seminar On Architecture And Historic Preservation in Central And Eastern Europe. New York, New York, November, 1975; Kurczewski, Jacek. The resurrection of rights in Poland. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, Schama, Simon. In the Realm of the Lithuanian Bison. Landscape and Memory. New York: Vintage Books. 1995;

11 11 Appendix: Figures Figure 1: Anselm Kiefer, Lilith s daughters, source: Arasse, 278.

12 12 Figure 2 (top): Railway terminal photographed in source: Dworzec Cesarski Figure 3 (bottom): Railway terminal photographed in Source: photograph by Magdalena Cagara, January 2007.

13 Figure 4: Site plan of site location in Poznan, Poland. 13

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