Wartopia II

At the foundation of Aleksandra Polisiewicz’s Wartopia project are German WWII-era plans for the rebuilding of Warsaw. These plans reflect a tradition of attempting to design ideal cities and, fortunately, belong to the group of urban utopias that never came to see the light of day. The artist utilised Hubert Gross’s concept titled “Die Neue Deutsche Stadt Warschau” along with designs by Friedrich Pabst, the capital city’s chief architect in 1939–1943. The documents reveal the Nazis’ intentions to transform Warsaw into an orderly city with clear municipal divisions, while, at the same time, degrading it to the status of a provincial transit hub inhabited by Germans and a few Poles for whom specific quarters were designated. The Royal Castle was slated to become a Nazi Party Congressional Hall, with Zygmunt’s Column becoming a monument to Germany. Also figuring prominently in the designs were a complex of Party buildings (Gauforum) and a residential community for members of the German elite.

In addition to elements sourced from the German plans, Wartopia also features classically inspired structures added by the artist. References to Classicism were common in totalitarian visions of cities. Hitler regularly employed such language when discussing his plans for the rebuilding of Linz or the transformation of Berlin into Germania, the capital of the world. A disciplined layout and a severe building style were typically associated with authority and control. We encounter such urban scenery in most of Europe’s post-communist countries and in Asian states currently under totalitarian rule (see the North Korean city of Pyongyang).

The work’s ambiguous title is an amalgamation of the word “war” (referencing Warsaw as well as armed conflict) with the particle “topia,” which can be traced as much to the Greek word “topos” (place) as to the term “ou topos” (utopia, a place that does not exist). The artist refrained from a historically accurate reconstruction of the German plans as it would have been impossible on account of the nature of the sources. Nevertheless, recovering the designs from the archives and subjecting them to an artistic transformation is an act that reminds us of the deceptive nature of utopias and the ideological bedrock at their foundation.

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