The Blighting of Krakow.

The destruction of Krakow continues apace. Krakow was a unique and beautiful city which survived World War Two as the retreating Nazis had not enough time to detonate the explosives given the sheer pace of the Soviet Army during the January Offensive of 1945.

The positioning of the huge concrete bunker of Galeria Krakowska completely obliterated the whole area around the nineteenth century Dworzec Glowny built in 1847 and which brought railway modernity to Krakow for the first time in its history.

Cynically, it was placed expressly to make all those entering Krakow have to go through it in order to get to the eastern part of the city and to get to the bus station on the other side. The shuttle train from Balice Airport brings the cash laden Easy Jet migrant or tourist direct to Galeria Krakowska.

As a World Heritage City designated as such by UNESCO, the Rada Miejska has continued to allow rapacious predators to encroach upon the City Centre outside the immediately protected centre to try to squeeze in as many ugly pieces of post-modernist architectural kitsch as they can.

Naturally, the Old Town is not under threat of demolition. But the UNESCO criteria makes it binding that "the tangible and intangible inheritance of the city" is preserved by the Rada Miejska and the Polish state.

Such wording is problematic. The rapacious property developer, financier and lawyer Henryk Gaertner of G D & K Group has boasted that the Gierek era "Skeletor" or Skeleton, a project never finished, will be transformed into Krakow's version of the Rockefeller Centre.

The banal Symon Duda of G D & K bragged that the Treimorfa Tower will be "even higher than St Mary's Tower", a church next to Krakow's Rakowice Cemetary, a beautiful place which is Krakow's version of the Per Lachiase Cemetary in Paris.

The Rada Miejska and the Mayor of Krakow, Jacek Majchrowski, have colluded with these plans and continually lied about this building being on a exceptional nature in Krakow. The latest visualisations at a "Krakow NOW" exposition in Plac Szczepanska does not bear this out.

The main enemy of an effective conservation group in Krakow in docility and public apathy: it is not that Krakowians like these innovations but they feel powerless to do anything to prevent politicians of all kinds from left to right genuflecting before corporations from elsewhere.

The Treimorfa Tower is a direct assault on the traditional fabric of Krakow motivated by greed and the fact that the middlemen organising the project have some form of control over a democratically elected municipal government in hoc to their exclusive designs.

When questioned about the UNESCO criteria, Henryk Gaertner sneered that the UNESCO World Heritage Status of Krakow was "not legally binding" and of a "discretionary nature". In actual fact, the law making it a UNESCO city IS legally binding if it is to remain one.

These "goodfella" or Gordom Gekko style financier capitalists seldom call their so-called "Class A" block space by the name of 'architecture'. The G D & K promotional sites on the Internet refer mostly to "Investment Projects".

Geartner was allowed to build an office block next to the Issac Synagogue which had a facade of Pinczow Limestone, apparently to fit in with the Synagogue and also alluding to the Synagogue in Pinczow, as if he was being sensitive to the Jewish heritage in 12 Kupa Street in Kazimierz.
From the side angle, the block looks like any block that could be built in 1960's Britain when restrictions were flouted and London was blighted with ugly boxy blocks made from concrete. Kazimierz is in the UNESCO World Heritage zone.

When looking at these aesthetically hideous and brutal buildings, with minimalist and futuristic interiors that have all the charm of Gestapo Interrogation Headquarters or NKVD cells, it's hard not to see that this is the architectural result of "Market Bolshevism".

Certainly, there is little transparency, a key neoliberal buzzword parroted by investors who seem curiously reluctant to be very transparent when it comes to their own financial affairs, not least when Gaertner fixes it for his clients to have their finances sorted in Luxembourg.

The same is true of a Portuguese Development Corporation called Gerium Developments who were handed control over a quarry site called Zakrzowek where generations of Krakowians could enjoy the stunning lakes and wildlife there.
On May 31st 2010, popular protests forced the Rada Miejska to take a vote on whether to preserve it as a green space. The vote went in favour of Gerium Developments as 12 councillors mysteriously disappeared on the day of the vote. No reasons were officially given.

Gerium Developments proposed the "banal location" of Zakrzowek would be made less banal by building the development shown below. Their PR chimed that one good reason for this partnership is that both Poland and Portugal begin with the letter "P".
Meanwhile the Rada Miejska seems intent on catching up with "western norms" by almost intentionally copying all the terrible planning errors made by bureaucrats in Britain in the 1960's, 70's and since telescoped into one huge assault of the city's historical fabric.

One such trend is to give over the development of the city to big business and corporate sponsors who not only get everything they expressly demand but also patronise idiotic and tasteless initiatives to bring "conceptual art" to Krakow's streets.

Art Boom, financed by Tauron Energy and rapacious media promoters like Lifeboat Publications who produce Cracow-Life.com and The Krakow Post, is part and parcel of the destruction of Krakow's status as a cultural cradle of the Polish nation.

Cracowlife.com has explicitly encouraged young enthusiasts to go around the elegant Planty which rings the Stare Miasto spraying in garish green their logo. They call this "having fun with spray cans". Such anti-social vandalism is not prevented by the police or the authorities.

Certainly, the trend of "Art Boom perpetually impose repellent pieces of kitsch in the centre of a temporary nature evades the restrictions. Yet what is temporary, whether a large Bar in the shape of a Mushroom in the centre, can become permanent by stealth.

Even if they are not permanent, they detract from the romance of the old streets of Krakow, as this grotesque kitsch installation proves when placed outside the magnificent Peter and Paul Baroque Church on ulica Grodska.
Dr Monika Bogdanowska has fought against this. In response to the Art Boom kitsch, given the thumbs up by the idiotic Mayor Majchrowski, Dr Bogdanowska wrote of this rubbish and criticised the excuses made by it's apologists,

'This is very easy and common excuse: "Oh come on, this is not permanent". So I want to ask "Why should we not react if we are deprived the beauty of our city even if it is not permanent..and for what reason?

And the only reason is that someone is making money out of our common space!" one not permanent crap is being replaced by another not piece of impermanent crap - again and again. Finally people get used to devastated place - as it is with Rynek - I am sure many would be surprised when it is finally cleaned and all these scaffoldings, cranes, and wooden huts removed.

I dare say many would complain that it is too empty there...And this is how works aesthetic demoralisation! These spaces should shape young tastes, young people should become sensitive to the beauty of ancient city!

And they got clear message of how to get profits out of it - end of story..

As to Art Boom-let me appeal to the artists: take the challenge and please make your art in space which is an artistic desert - not in excellent historic spaces - for it is so easy!

Dr Bogdanowska is the daughter of the late Janusz Bogdanowski, once the Konserwator of Krakow and who for years opposed McDonalds placing its huge gaudy logos on a new restuarant on Ulica Szewska, managed to get them to place only a minimal golden "M" on the front of the building.

Now in Plac Matejki there is a massive Yellow Microwave.
One such installation called AUSCHWITZWIELICZKA by the Tate Modern Artist already has become permanent. This large concrete wall totally blights Plac Niepodglosci and was paid for partly by the Rada Mieska via Cracovia Krakow-it's tourist promotion bureaucrats.

Pitifully, a tourist sign in this Square, over the river in Podgorze, advertises "The Pearls of Podgorze", including the ancient Sw Benedikt Church, in it's current form dating to the seventeenth century, in pristine condition.

In fact, the building is rotting away amongst thickets of undergrowth, neglected and crumbling no less than the Austrian Hill Fort immediately next to it. Money can be found for repugnant kitsch but not Krakow's historical monuments. The scale of the incompetence is staggering.

Not only was Henryk Gaertner allowed to build the absurd Park Inn, a polished piece of architectural kitsch that looks like a Space Age Fortress that could as well be on the Moon as in full view of the Wawel, The Skalka Church and the Wisla.

On derelict land a new Conference Centre will be placed next to it of utmost hideousness in design, a huge plate glass and steel atrium that looks like a slab of Galeretka, the jellied dish that is a popular piece of cheap food in Poland,
The designation of Krakow as "Poland's Oxford" is misplaced. Skyscrapers would not be allowed to be built looming over the centre of Oxford. Unless UNESCO criteria is more strictly enshrined in law, greedy developers like Gaertner and Gerium and other will destroy Krakow.