Abstract
We know that the point is no longer to only interpret the world, but to change it. The question is: how? It turns out, we know this as well – but we keep forgetting it. This is why books such as Warsaw Housing Cooperative: City in Action are so important. They remind us about our attempts, struggles and their outcomes. The power of capitalism comes (among other things) from its ability to store and accumulate data and schemes, to apply them; but also, on the other hand, from its ability to make us forget, doubt (Oreskes and Conway, 2011) or spread ignorance (Proctor and Schiebinger, 2008). From this perspective, it can be accepted that capitalism is not a system that fosters innovation, but one that masterfully uses the ideas of others and public innovations for private profit (Mazzucato, 2013). So our pivotal challenge is to take back our knowledge, especially knowledge about historical or possible victories and solutions, and to be able to build on that. To be able to grasp reality in its complexity using a trained, special kind of imagination – sociological (Mills, 2000) or even ontological (Nowak, 2013) – and to be able to picture alternatives, other futures, rational and possible utopias (Wallerstein, 1998). This is essential if we want to survive the Anthropocene, overcome the Capitalocene, and inhabit the Urbanocene (Chwałczyk, 2020).
Such ‘recovery’ endeavours are becoming popular. There is a book about the Chilean socialist internet (Medina, 2011) or, on the other hand but on the same topic, one showing how, in contrast to their typical characterizations, the USSR employed a more competitive model of cooperation between scientists than the USA, and that this actually hindered development of their internet, while the USA employed a more collaborative model, which gave them an advantage (Peters, 2016). Then, in the book reviewed here, we can read about a project that provided a chance for the realization of a more socialist livelihood, its connections with direct democracy, modernity and the commons, as well as the challenges faced in the everyday shaping of the new citizens and new spaces in respect to each other. This is the meaning of the ‘city in action’ referred to in the title, specifically meaning the Warsaw Housing Cooperative (WHC) in Żoliborz district of interwar Warsaw. It was an alternative to capitalist housing, and what makes it especially important is that it was being developed in the unfriendly environment of conservative and authoritarian Poland.
Magda Matysek-Imielińska also sees the importance of this work and approach, as she clearly states in the first, introductory chapter of the book. Paying attention to the problems of contemporary neoliberal cities, she points out that the main strategies of resistance are not enough, and how the knowledge and experience of the WHC might help. Her other starting inspirations, besides Mills and Wallerstein, include Bal’s preposterous history, treating utopia as a method after Ruth Levitas, engaged humanities, critical urban studies, and Richard Sennett’s performative approach. As she briefly outlines the subject and object of the city in action, she also states that the book focuses neither on individuals, nor on ideologies, but on a community shaping itself. The same goes for the material and nonmaterial – they are treated as two sides of the same coin, with neither being neglected. This holistic perspective allowed a broad and detailed picture to be captured, zooming in and out accordingly. It is done very skilfully, as the author is trained both in sociology and cultural studies. This gives her a good sense of proportion and the ability to move between the details and the grand picture, between structure and agency, between the material and mental aspects.
Chapters 2 and 3 – the second one was written specially for the English edition – serve to give the reader an overview of the background, particularly the historical context. In each case, the first half is devoted to a global perspective; the second to local considerations. There are three main topics here. The first is the history of modernist architecture, housing, and urban utopianism and cooperativism itself – viewed as an attempt made in housing to respond to the industrial revolution. The characteristic tensions between, on the one hand, top-down planning elements which sought to shape a new subject and, on the other, the grassroots self-organization of many different entities is a thread that will continue throughout the whole book. There are two things worth mentioning here. The first is the refusal to accept the myth of failure and the end of modernism and modernist architecture – it was not architecture that failed, according to the author, and it deserves to be defended, though not uncritically. The second is the perspective the author chooses here, but also throughout the whole book, which I would describe as a semi-peripheral perspective. Semi-peripheral in the literal sense, as when the author points out that the things merely described and postulated by architects from the centre were already in motion, being built and managed by architect-activists in Żoliborz, who managed with half the means at the disposal of the centre, but with better results – as creativity was necessary, but also fruitful. And semi-peripheral in the figurative sense, as when she chooses to look at the CIAM and Corbusier/May split from the perspective of the Polish female architect Helena Syrkus. This is another thread that runs throughout the book – the author rightly points out gender and class tensions every time they arise. This is an understandable and commendable choice. After all, it is the semi-peripheries that are often the spaces of new thought, a fresh look, experiments and places where interesting things happen and new ones emerge. The second topic is the history of Polish cooperativism – both in general (the tensions between neutral-capitalist and left-engaged cooperatives) and in detail (the beginnings of WHC and struggles – as being the ideologically engaged cooperative they had to resist, compromise and subvert). The third topic is the Polish historical context, as the book covers the period of 1926–39. This is the time when Poland had regained its independence, after 123 years of political non-existence, and joined the world race as a worn-out semi-periphery with grandiose ambitions and big problems – among them ones with homelessness and housing.
Having provided the reader with the necessary background, the author then dives into the details. Chapter 4 reveals the performative and agonistic character of the project, and shows how the WHC came to be. As architecture and flats are a process here, complete only with counselling (and even education), it is not an end in itself but a means – thus the end and goals are something that emerges from interactions. There are two interesting examples/media of that process, both in line with the Goldfarb approach tackled in the first chapter. One is the local WHC press, which was a tool of power and a platform for negotiations between the community board consisting of modernist architect-activists and the inhabitants. The second is the kitchen and its furnishings, where many aspects (class, gender, taste and custom, plans and practices, the servant question) clash. In a discussion considering other interpretations, the author convincingly shows that the Bruklaska kitchen project was an emancipation tool – through lifestyle and in combination with other institutions provided by the WHC. As all of that happenes in the process (of being disciplined and disciplining), the WHC takes on an indisputable political dimension. Thus, through this attained subjectivity, Żoliborz became a self-governing city.
Chapter 5 mainly deals with the process of design and this two-way learning from the architect-activists’ viewpoint. It also circles back to the context – ever-present in the book – of modernity and neighbouring apparatuses (from the curvature of buildings and pedestrian routes, through the public baths, boiler house and communal house, to ‘House Delegation’, ‘Tenant Council’, ‘Building Delegates’). The last part is also dedicated to the subject(s) / ‘urban entities’. Here I have some small doubts about the scope of usage of Hardt and Negri’s multitude – as a conceptualization of the collective subject, along with its formation, and that of its subparts, individual subjects. My doubts concern not the concept itself, but rather come from a comparison of how the concept is introduced and announced in the first chapter, and how it is being later used. Presenting it in juxtaposition with Agamben – as a possibility of alternative conclusions drawn from similar assumptions about the city as a camp – is interesting, as are other usages of Hardt and Negri’s writings in the book. But the concept of the multitude feels a little underutilized, and may be even unnecessary. Especially when the author adds the ‘joyous encounters’ critique, to point out after Harvey the insufficient everyday materialistic embedding of Hardt and Negri’s writings, or when in the next chapter the author uses the more materialistically oriented old Castellian urban issue, which accents groundedness, in comparison with the new Merrifieldian one.
Meanwhile, when one reads all the quoted interesting and accurate excerpts, especially from Barbara Brukalska, but also the texts and theorizing of Adam Próchnik, and Helena and Szymon Syrkus, one can wonder if perhaps a much more adequate and innovative theory and ontology of the collective subject could have been derived from it (using e.g. grounded theory – Charmaz, 2006) instead of using the concept of the multitude. Especially since it feels partially done – in the book there are many fragments of Brukalska’s writings on this topic. The author even suggests that there seems to be more potential there – e.g. for a critical approach to modernity and its sometimes totalitarian aspects, and individual-collective tensions (in Brukalska’s 1948 writings). It’s just that in the first chapter it feels like the multitude is being pulled onto the banners and will be a crucial concept but later all the interesting theoretical work on collective and individual subjects is really being ‘done’ by and managed through writings of Brukalska (among others).
Chapter 6 continues to describe and analyse the infrastructures and institutions of the cooperative (cafeteria, ‘Cooperative Inn’ shops, work agency, laundry room, ‘Independent Horticultural Farm’, ‘Social Construction Firm’, etc.). But now they are looked upon as primarily economic, and secondarily political (although politics comes back to the fore in the end of the chapter and in the subsequent ones). The ‘lenses’ used here are those of the right to the city, the question about the ability to revolt/resist/reform capitalism, gendered non-material work, and identity production and education. Here, the author underlines the material dimension and importance of such a perspective, as well as of looking outside, or even to the constitutive outside. For example, the agricultural cooperatives and the ties between the WHC’s funding and Polish ‘big tobacco’ can be viewed in this way. In this context, there is one question I find interesting, although it seems to reach beyond the scope of the book. This is the issue of the material and economical flows between the WHC and the outside (in the spirit of the tables on pages 284–90), e.g.: Where did people work? How much, in terms of work hours, did they work/contribute inside? How much money was spent inside? What goods and services were being produced on site, and which ‘imported’, and in what quantities? Or even further, about the construction of nature in the WHC. Although I doubt there is data to answer those questions, it would be the basis for an interesting analysis – especially alongside the somewhat autarchical visions and conceptualizations of the WHC as an autonomous zone proposed at the end of this chapter.
The next three chapters (7 through 9) focus more on non-material, institutional, self-regulatory, self-awareness aspects, and look at yet more WHC institutions (the ‘Glass Houses’ Association, library, nursery, garden, theatre, school, celebrations) through models of a workshop, settlement house, laboratory – but not school. Although the educational component is strong in the WHC, it is ruled out in Chapter 9 because of the postulate to replace school-like cultures of learning with educational cultures oriented towards goals and values (the effectiveness of this is also discussed). All three chapters have strong thinker-patrons, in the persons of Richard Sennett, Antonio Gramsci and Jacques Ranciere. Chapter 8 returns to the subject of architect-activists, as in Chapter 5, but deepens the two-way knowledge transfer theme, with a twist – focusing on those architect-activists as also being participants and inhabitants of the WHC (and turning attention to other inhabitants as well, for example children in Chapter 9).
Chapter 10, like Chapter 2, was added for the English edition – but this one is not just an addition aimed at helping English readers to grasp the book better. It is a step ahead, as it extends research that was hinted at in the Polish edition as worth pursuing. It explores the fate and functioning of the WHC during the Second World War and briefly after. As it turns out, the solutions and values developed over the interwar period worked, or they were successfully adapted to this liminal situation and state of emergency. But the WHC – as it was – ended after the war, as it was absorbed by the state. Chapter 11 sums up and concludes the book.
I would like to stress the topicality and relevance of this book, and the issues tackled in it – but now from a little different perspective than in the beginning of this review. The subject of human-environment interactions and learning capacities is especially alive today – as Gibson’s psychological affordances theory is being applied in the field of design (Norman, 2013) or when local laboratory territories for development of contributory research and economy are being postulated in response to the Climate Crisis (Stiegler and the Internation Collective, 2021). The questions that Polish architect-activists were tackling back then (and to which they responded with very interesting, theoretical and practical answers) are still being asked in new but similar contexts. It even seems that both Bruklaska’s kitchen project and Gibson’s theory draw more or less from the same source – the psychology of vision. One can wonder if this knowledge can turn out to be vital and useful – especially when one of the problems in design studies and with tackling this field from a psychological perspective is its blindness to politics and conflict. Yet tackling these aspects constituted a strong side of the Polish creators of the WHC. It is crucial nowadays, when we face the consequences of cities and other environments shaped to facilitate certain behaviours that capture and imprison us in the capitalist, planet-killing status quo.
To people interested in social experiments that have been undertaken, and in alternative visions and realizations of (micro)society in particular contexts, this book will be very interesting and useful, and I thoroughly recommend it. I especially appreciate the attention given to the material and solid infrastructures intertwined with non-material, relational, social and mental dimensions (the stabilization aspect) and looking at the WHC as an environment; as a shaping, active container. As the great city and technology specialist Lewis Mumford (1961) remarked, we do not give enough attention to the containers and their shaping capabilities.
In the end, I would just like to add that I cannot agree with the author on one thing – as she writes: ‘[t]oday, the prospect of occupying a 30m2 two-room flat, with a kitchenette, without a bathtub, but equipped with a toilet and a washbasin, does not impress anyone’ (p. 62). I think most people suffering from homelessness would be impressed. Many PhD students too – add a shower and washing machine, and I pay a third, sometimes half of my salary to live in such a place. But the point with the WHC is that you didn’t just get 30m2 – you got an environment, community, commonality, modernity, a project in motion, and participation in an attempt to resist and locally dismantle capitalist logic (with varying degrees of success). Reading about the whole project might make one yearn to inhabit such a space. I know I would trade my washing machine and shower for that.