The exhibition catalog of Warsaw Under Construction 9 Who will reclaim Defilad Square?
In this book, published by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw on the occasion of the 9th edition of the Warsaw Under Construction Festival of Architecture Tomasz Fudala, Werner Huber, Grzegorz Mika, Michał Murawski, Ania Molenda and Cristina Ampatzidou, Artur Jerzy Filip, Marlena Happach, Magda Grabowska, Aleksandra Litorowicz, Bogna Świątkowska, and Tim Tompkins write and discuss how to turn a parking lot into an urban square, the shadow of Stalin and the Palace complex.
The book features an essay titled This Place Could be Otherwise authored by Ania Molenda and Cristina Ampatzidou of Amateur Cities. The text (only available in Polish) reflects on public squares as a spatial expression of the public realm and analyzes the multiplicity of forces that throughout time attempt to control their shape and the collective identity that they are meant to cement. Those constant changes represent the alterations of societal ideas about how public space best reflects and serves the public realm, often intertwined with abrupt interventions by various forms of political ideologies that want to influence them. The shape they take is therefore always a reflection of politics and their lived testimony. Their definitions change. Their forms do not settle, but the breaks and shifts are not necessarily an indication of failure, they are a reflection of local complexities and histories that allow us to build a reflection of an ever-evolving public realm.