Will the downtown Gdynia be on the UNESCO list? Why does he have a chance?

Gdynia next to the great Chinese Wall, Yellowstone National Park, or the Palace and Park in Versailles. Early abominated downtown can be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The decision is to be made in July this year. What distinguishes the modernist architecture of Gdynia? Why does he have a chance to become one of the facilities of cultural heritage with a “exceptional universal value” for humanity?

In Gdynia, concrete ships flow the streets – Patron Henryk Chudziński once said.

And it was the architects that meant when designing the city center. White, heavy masses of buildings with a glass ground floor, which resemble large ships floating on the water. In addition, the streamlined, rounded forms and balconies with metal balustrades that look like those from ships.

In some buildings you can also clearly extend the highest parts that resemble stork nest on ships.

And finally these wavy balconies at Świętojańska 122 or in the tenement house of Marian Krenski.

Buildings in the center of Gdynia are different, unique. But is it enough to be on the UNESCO World Heritage List? We will find out about it in July this year.

We talked with prof. dr hab. Maria Jolanta Sołtysik from the architecture department of the Gdańsk University of Technology. Does he have a chance to become one of the cultural heritage facilities with a “exceptional universal value” for humanity?

From a small fishing village to “Windows to the World”

You have to start with history. Gdynia, once a small, agricultural-rhythm village became a significant city in Poland and it all began with the port.

– The construction of the port in Gdynia was the stimulus for building the city. It was initially created mainly for military reasons because the Port of Gdańsk, which was at the time of the free city, refused military transhipments at the key moment of the Bolshevik war of 1920. Poland did not want to withdraw from military and commercial interests with Gdańsk, but the deteriorating political relations forced the state authorities to think about another solution, about the construction of an independent port within the limits of the Commonwealth – says prof. dr hab. Maria Jolanta Sołtysik.

It started with plans from 1920, later there was a small temporary port, and after a dozen or so years a rapidly developing large commercial and military port was created.

– In 1934 he was the largest port in the Baltic, with a transhipment capacity of 7 million tons a year. Extremely modern, with deep pools with well -equipped quays – adds the professor.

The city had to be felt as the back of this port.

– The first urban plans of the city were prepared in 1926 at the Ministry of Public Works in Warsaw by Roman Feliński and Adam Kuncewicz. Feliński was already a very well -known architect and author of one of the first Polish textbooks for urban planning. His younger colleague Adam Kuncewicz, at the same time, worked at the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology and not at the Department of City Construction, but of Polish architecture. But he was a urban planner of flesh and blood – says prof. Maria Jolanta Sołtysik.

They started planning the city.

Gdynia was granted city rights on February 10, 1926. – The port and city that were created from scratch, on the “raw root” proved to be a success. In 1926, the village of Gdynia had about 6,000 inhabitants, and in 1939 there was already a city of 120,000. It was an American pace – adds Sołtysik.

Why can it be on the UNESCO list?

To be on the UNESCO World Heritage List, you need to prove the “outstanding universal value” of a cultural or nature monument and at least one of the criteria specified by UNESCO.

– In the application entitled “Gdynia – an early -modern city center” two such criteria were proposed. The first, which says that this team shows significant changes taking place in the historical age of the interwar period and the second, claiming that it is an outstanding example of a certain type of architectural and urban implementation – explains the professor.

The “outstanding universal value” of Gdynia, however, had to be proved in the application. The applicants wrote four features.

And feature

– First of all, it was pointed out that its downtown is a unique example of an early -modern city center, built from scratch in 1926 – 1939 and illustrating the transformation that this period referred to urban planning and architecture – says Professor Sołtysik about the main foundation. – Construction on the “raw root” of a large city in Europe in the first half of the 20th century was something unusual and had no precedent – he adds

Two large new investments of that era were comparable to the Gdynia scale – Tel Aviv created in the Middle East and Asmara, created in East Africa – which was recently entered on the UNESCO list.

– However, in Europe this type of large modernist urban centers were not created – says the professor.

Smaller centers were created, but they were small centers.

– Tel Aviv in the Middle East in Asia, in the Middle East, in the Middle East, in Israel And Asmara in East Africa, also entered on the UNESCO list – says the professor. – However, in Europe, this type of large downtown centers were not created – he adds.

As Sołtysik explains, Gdynia is a great illustration of changes what the periods of the 1920s and 1930s brought to architecture and urban planning.

– The idea of ​​the city of the Garden, the idea of ​​an industrial city, a zone city and a functional city was implemented here. These were all early -modern concepts. And in the architecture itself there was a revolutionary aesthetic change, rejecting all decorations and ornament. The “ornament is a crime” and negatively negated, which for centuries was the essence of architecture, introducing the aesthetics of the structure, the function of the material to it – he says.

– And all this, both in urban planning and architecture, was accompanied by a new concept of a house and apartment: functional, hygienic, with access to greenery. It was a leading topic of the entire interwar period, for which the original solution was also proposed in the center of Gdynia – adds the professor.

II feature

Śródmieście Gdynia is early modernism. And this is something special for the city's arrangement.

– Another characteristic feature of Śródmieście Gdynia indicated in the UNESCO application is that in an urban sense it combines tradition with modernity. It is a modernist city, but based on a traditional layout of street and square. To simultaneously meet the modern postulate of hygiene conditions of residence, urban quarters created by the street network in Gdynia are the quarters of a new type, still with the uulic edge, but with large greenery in the middle. At least, this was what was founded in the original idea, when Roman Feliński and Adam Kuncewicz designed the city – says the professor.

Later it happened that one -story outbuildings appeared in these courtyards. – First as temporary, although as a result they did not disappear and proved to be durable. But this is the difference between theory and practice, which is sometimes difficult to control – says Sołtysik.

A new type of tenement house enabled internal courtyards with access to greenery.

– Modern -recession tenement house. In the nineteenth century, the structure of tenements densely enclosed in the back and side outbuilding, with small “wells”, which were the bane of those times, dominated the structure of tenements densely enclosed in the back. However, in Gdynia there were to be new type tenement houses, consisting only of front houses without side wings, followed by a green courtyard – explains Sołtysik.

And these features distinguish Gdynia from both the nineteenth-century cities and the later ones, emerging after 1945.

3rd feature

Another feature that the downtown Gdynia reports to the UNESCO list is about is the city's close spatial relationship with the landscape and the sea.

– It came from the basics of thinking about the New Town, about its representative district, about its coastal symbolism. The Association of Architecture and Urban Planning with Greenery and Landscape is one of those avant -garde ideas of modernism that was wonderfully interpreted and developed in Gdynia – says Sołtysik.

As the professor explains, the way of connecting the city to the sea is original and unprecedented in the urban planning of the city center.

– It was carried out in the South Mole system – 120 meters wide and 630 meters long, pirus, going out into the sea and constituting the extension of the main downtown axis, 10 February street and Kościuszko Square. At the same time, the pier was connected to the sailing pool and a large seaside square-forum, from which sea performances were to be viewed. Unfortunately, before 1939 this concept was only partially implemented – says prof. Maria Jolanta Sołtysik.

IV feature

An important special feature is also the architecture of Śródmieście Gdynia itself, which is a “expressive illustration, made in the interwar period, a modernist breakthrough”.

– The birth of modernist aesthetics as in the lens can be seen in the architecture of Gdynia. It shows the process of gradually accepting the canons of the avant -garde, which of course was a complete novelty and did not accept anywhere immediately. In the structure of the city center, it is great to trace what path architecture has traveled from the historicism of the mid -1920s, to the international style of the second half of the 1930s. The first tenement houses and public buildings are, after all, the realizations of academic classicism – says the professor. – In the architecture of Gdynia you can find pearls of both historicing formations and real pearls of avant -garde modernism – he adds.

A decision will be made in July

It is because of these four early -abdominal characteristics that Gdynia Śródmieście may be on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

– Already in the 1930s, the architects of Gdynia were aware that they were building in an unusual place, which is a sea “gate to the world”. They began to consciously refer to marine symbolism. All modernism somehow referred to this symbolism, but somewhere else was unlikely to talk about “sea”, but about the streamlined, bright, expressive and dynamic form. And in Gdynia it was combined with clearly ship symbolism – says prof. Sołtysik.

The professor admits that this is a good time for Śródmieście Gdynia to have a chance to get to the UNESCO list.

– In the communist period, all Gdynia's qualities were consciously, propaganda. That is why they began to break through only after the political coup of the late 1980s, when it was possible to talk about them openly. Earlier – according to spread propaganda – Gdynia was a complete defeat of the sanation urban planning and economy. Now we can and we talk loudly about its values ​​and why it is so unique – sums up prof. dr hab. Maria Jolanta Sołtysik.

The Commission will decide on whether the early Modern Śródmieście Gdynia will be inscribed on the World Heritage List of UNESCO (WHL) on July 6-16 this year, at a session in Paris.