Fort: Centrum Solidarnosci

Opened at the end of August, the European Centre of Solidarnosc was created with the aim of popularising the heritage of Solidarnosc in Poland and beyond while actively participating to de construction of a European identity.

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On August 31, 1980, Stocznia Gdanska – or Gate n.2 one of the entry point to Gdansk’s shipyard has become a historical place, with the signature of the Gdansk Agreement leading to the establishment of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarnosc (Solidarity). Thirty four years later, to the day, the city of Gdansk and the European commission have inaugurated the new head quarter of the Europejskie Centrum Solidarnosci, designed by polish studio Fort.

Fort, Europejskie Centrum Solidarnosci, Gdansk

Gdansk, a city of nearly half a million inhabitants situated on the Baltic sea, is Poland’s main seaport. The areas on the outskirts of the historical city centre were earmarked for naval industry since the mid nineteenth century when the construction of the Prussian Royal shipyard – later called imperial shipyard – started. Eventually renamed after Lenin, and hiring about 17,000 workers, Gdansk shipyard was the industrial flagship of communist Poland. And it was precisely there that Polish non-violent road to real freedom and independence all started, eventually leading to the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the end of soviet domination in the East-Central Europe and even the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And we all know the story (if you don’t I recommend at the n old classic, 1981 Czlowiek z zelaza [Man of Iron] or a new release, the 2013 Wałęsa. Człowiek z nadziei [Walesa. Man of Hope] both by Polish director and Oscar winner Andrzej Wajda): Gdansk shipyard became a symbol of fight against communism when a group of workers led by former electrician Lech Walesa, rallied peacefully throughout Poland, Silesian miners, intellectuals from Warsaw and Krakow behind a common watchword: “Solidarity”. Yet, paradoxically, after the political transformations of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the shipyard experienced a deep crisis and finally ceased to operate in most of its area.

The shipyard, nowadays employing a bunch of workers, is in the process of becoming a new residential and cultural district called the Young City. Opened at the end of August as the first stone towards the establishment of this new district, the European Centre of Solidarnosc, was created with the aim of popularising the heritage of Solidarnosc in Poland and beyond while actively participating to de construction of a European identity.

In December 2007, Polish studio Fort architects won the international competition for the construction of the The Europejskie Centrum Solidarności, a 25,000 sqm building distributed over five stories. The building will host a museum dedicated to the history of Solidarnosc and of other democratic movements and changes in countries of central Europe. It will also include a permanent multimedia exhibition space of 3,000 sq m, an archive, a library, a media and education centre, a restaurant, as well as a bar and caffe with terrace and a winter garden. And what will be exhibited in this new museum? The bullet-ridden leather jacket which belonged to Ludwik Piernicki, a 20-year-old shipyard worker and victim of the December 1970 massacre; the wooden boards with the 21 demands which hung on the gate to the Lenin Shipyard during the strike of August 1980; the gantry crane, where legendary trade union activist Anna Walentynowicz worked; the desk which once belonged to Jacek Kuroń, one of the leaders of the opposition against Poland’s communist regime, a gift from his wife are amongst the 18,000 memorabilia to be shown in the museum.

As difficult as it may be, the architects of the Europejskie Centrum Solidarności have tried to translate a historical movement of protest and a whole page of 20th century history into a building form. Simplicity, dynamism and universality are, according to Fort, what best characterised Solidarnosc. Therein, for Wojciech Targowski, principal at Fort, the building “reflect the essence of Solidarity and at the same time appeal to the young evoking interest, not only in the history of Solidarity, but also in its currently valid ideals.” – maybe even too extreme – simplicity was obtained with a series of parallel walls, bare and uncomplex, disposed of unnecessary details, and with a crude, rusty corten steel. “The first one cracks in half and leans forward. The others follow suit. The sense of dynamism of the historical change is achieved through slanting, rhythmically repetitive directions determined by the surfaces of the walls.” The building thus should remind the rusted shell of a ship, maybe in motion. This might seem very cliché but it actually feels right in the very poetic post-industrial decadent area of Gdansk shipyard.

Little known outside Poland, Gdansk based Fort architects was established in 1989 by Wojciech Targowski, Piotr Mazur, and Antoni Taraszkiewicz. The studio has built a large number of residential projects, as well as some office buildings, and other public buildings and service buildings. And if it might seem a little surprising that an international competition will end up in the commissioning of a very local firm this might be due to a simple fact: “They might have been in a better place to understand this very complexe historical reality and translate it into a building” says public relation representative Magdalena Charkin-Jaszcza.

With two new buildings opening in the next few weeks – the other one being the Shakespearian theatre by Renato Rizzi about to open in September – the small city of Gdansk seems to be in complete renaissance. This confirms that. According to a recent article published by The Economist, Poland has, since the collapse of communism seen its economy grow by more than any other country in the rest of Europe. According to The Economist “Unlike most of its ex-communist neighbours, which opted for a softer transition to capitalism, Poland embarked on “shock therapy” in 1990, masterminded by Leszek Balcerowicz, then finance minister… The Poles were quick to see the opportunities in the EU’s structural and cohesion funds as well as the benefits of improving their own governance and transparency.” And, now, ten years after the entry of Poland into the EU, Europejskie Centrum Solidarnosci opens thanks to generous funds (in fact, almost half of the total budget) granted by the European Union itself.