They were world-class
Springer came out in 2013 with his tribute to the legendary architect couple, the Hansens, titled Blueprints: The Life and Work of Zofia and Oskar Hansen (Zaczyn. O Zofii i Oskarze Hansenach). He had already begun devising his plan for the book when working on Ill-Born, acting on a desire to know more about the couple, why these brilliant minds have only been discovered by a handful of experts and whether their ideas hold sway in contemporary architecture.
In the book, the methods of photography and writing merge, with a well-defined portrait framed in carefully chosen words. To understand the figure of Oskar Hansen – the Finnish-born son of a Norwegian and Russian raised in the multicultural city of Vilnius, who later settled in Poland – Springer set out north to Finland and Norway. There he instantly recognised Hansen's perspective on public space.
The concept of the Open Form conceived by Hansen and Zofia, his wife, is a theory of architecture that welcomes the individual into the discussion on space and structure, invoking a flexible approach similar to the approach taken in Scandinavia. All the while, Springer avers that the Open Form is not entirely over theory, explaining:
I had looked for the "open form" in the architecture of the Hansens, but I did not find it [...]. It sounds a bit like heresy [...]. I have a problem with identifying its background and the framework that the Hansens' project were meant to create for people, beyond a few individual formal solutions.
Hansen is a man of great, utopian ideals that did not suit the socialist agenda of his time, nor the capitalist reality that came later. Thanks to hours of conversation with Zofia Hansen and the couple's son, Igor Hansen, Springer came up with a witty, intimate biographical reportage that allows readers to understand a number of paradoxes intrinsic to the lives and works of this dynamic pair of nonconformists.
From the ego
Springer sets himself apart from his contemporaries in the field through his macro-scale portraits. Yet he shares that he is slowly shifting away from personal histories and leaning more towards social issues and processes on a broader scale. As he says in an interview with the Society of Polish Journalists, "This is what I want to write about. Some theoreticians of reportage take serious issue with defining this genre and this is precisely where its magic lies".
Writing in a style that closely mirrors his way of taking photographs, the journalist extends the frame, stepping back to take a broader perspective, looking for metaphors and understanding. In September 2013 his fourth book comes out, A Bathtub With a Colonnade: A Book of Reportage on Polish Space (Wanna z kolumnadą). Springer remains faithful to the idea that man revolves around the world, not the other way around.
Springer asks questions about the reasons for the "Polish ugliness" and he examines what happened to the state, which had one of the best urban planning systems in pre-war Europe, which often aroused jealousy in, for example, neighbouring countries. Is there a method in the chaos burdening Polish architecture? While touring the country extensively, Springer found unique, or at times absurd buildings – a Venetian palazzo near Warsaw, an Egyptian pyramid in Silesia. Billboards, intrusive building wraps, pastel-coloured blocks of flats, makeshift shacks, construction lawlessness, traditional Polish Highlander houses by the sea and manors built in the 1990s… The problem with public space in Poland lies not only in the material substance but also in the apathy towards surroundings, a lack of aesthetic education and low economic standing of Poles, which translates into the conviction that there are "bigger problems".
The author pessimistically sums up that "it will always be ugly here", however, it doesn’t mean that the situation is hopeless: luckily, during his travels, he gathered material for The Book of Awe (2016). He portrays buildings which are beautiful, functional, harmonious with their surroundings, or at least interesting and important for the Polish culture. The Palace of Culture and Science and the Żoliborz Orchards in Warsaw, the railway station and the library in Rumia near Gdańsk, the shopping centre in Mława some 130 kilometres from Warsaw, and the village clubhouse in Rakownia near Poznań – he described all these places in his short, illustrated essays.
Living in Poland
While Springer’s Book of Awe can be seen as a collection of entertaining anecdotes, which were gathered in passing and do not go into detail, his 13 Floors includes perhaps the most socially-engaged, emotional and challenging reportages of his oeuvre. He describes the contemporary housing situation in Poland and diagnoses it as scandalous. The journalist presents different cases of credit traps, the struggle with the renting market, real estate developers and banks. He criticises Poland as an "unliveable" country, which doesn’t offer any solutions, perhaps apart from inheriting a flat from wealthy relatives. Mateusz Halawa wrote:
Springer illustrates the personal costs of the policies and suggests that the problem lies in the retreating state. However, he reaches and even more distressing conclusion in his reportage: the state did not so much retreat as redirect the little money that existed to banks and real estate developers, so that they solve the problem. "People who get credit – as we read – simply filter cash. But it’s them who have to deal with debt." It’s a problem that the state has no answer for in the perspective of the next 30 years, but the indebted families are forced to have one (25.09.2015).
The cooperation with the Karakter publishing house resulted in Springer’s next project in 2015. Archipelag City is a journey across former capitals of voivodeships which ceased to exist after the 1998 administrative restructuring. Starting with the smallest one, Sieradz, and finishing with the largest one, Częstochowa. The author plucks medium-sized cities from obscurity, that they are often pushed into by big agglomerations, which get the majority of funds, media attention or simply inhabitants.
What to do in Konin, Radom, Leszno, Siedlce or Piła? The question is raised by nearly three million Poles (who live in former voivodeship capitals). Their answers are not heard very well in bigger cities. Located approximately 80 kilometres from Wrocław, Wałbrzych remains a symbol of despair, even though the city is a theatrical hub reverberating across the country and an architectural gem in the heart of one of Poland’s most beautiful regions. Jelenia Góra is habitually confused with Zielona Góra, even though there are 150 kilometres between them. The world’s largest collection of the visionary Stanisław Witkiewicz’s works is located in Słupsk and it is known only among art critics and connoisseurs. Konin’s river boulevards could be held as an example of good river management: the majority of big cities face grave problems in that matter.
An Internet blog, a series of texts in the Polityka weekly, a social media site – the multimedial project was topped off with a series of reportages published in 2016.
See more on Filip Springer on his website: filipspringer.com
Author: Dariusz Bochenek, August 2013. Translated by Agnes Monod-Gayraud, August 2013, updated by AP, July 2019.
Bibliography:
- Miedzianka. Historia znikania (Miedzianka: The Story of Disappearance), Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec 2011,
- Źle urodzone. Reportaże o architekturze PRL (Ill-Born: Polish Post-war Modernist Architecture), Karakter, Kraków 2012,
- Zaczyn. O Zofii i Oskarze Hansenach (Blueprints: The Life and Work of Zofia and Oskar Hansen), Karakter, Kraków 2013,
- Wanna z kolumnadą. Reportaże o polskiej przestrzeni (A Bathtub With a Colonnade. A Book of Reportage on Polish Space), Czarne 2013,
- 13 pięter (13 Floors), Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec 2015,
- Księga zachwytów (The Book of Awe), Agora, Warszawa 2016,
- Miasto Archipelag. Polska mniejszych miast (Archipelag City), Karakter, Kraków 2016.