Development Aid from Socialist Poland

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine a broad scope of third world–oriented training and scientific initiatives conducted in Poland as part of a global specialist network, locating those initiatives within a broader context of socialist development aids politics. To address the complex technoscientific construction of othering we discuss the research centers that supported work abroad, the forms of professional education delivered by Polish specialists abroad or by students from developing countries studying in Poland, and the international development assistance programs that formed the main framework for research into tropical design, planning, and construction.

Keywords:

• 1900–1999
• architecture
• urbanism and planning

Notes

Notes

1 Maciej Ziółek, “Budownictwo w warunkach klimatu tropikalnego,” Inżynieria i Budownictwo 7 (1965): 216–20; and Maciej Ziółek, “Problemy budownictwa w warunkach klimatu tropikalnego,” Informacja adresowana 58 (1968): 3–13.

2 Alexandra Quantrill, “Technical Supremacy: Tropical Architecture and Technologies of the British State,” in Nuts & Bolts of Construction History: Culture, Technology and Society, vol. 1, ed. Robert Carvais et al. (Paris: Picard, 2012), 443–47.

3 Ziółek, “Problemy budownictwa,” 3.

4 Ziółek, “Budownictwo,” 220.

5 Ziółek, “Problemy budownictwa,” 3.

6 Łukasz Stanek, “Second World’s Architecture and Planning in the Third World,” Journal of Architecture 17, no. 3 (2012): 299–307.

7 On Cold War dichotomies, see Annabel Wharton, Building in the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); and Crimson Historians and Urbanists, eds., New Towns on the Cold War Frontier (Rotterdam: International New Town Institute, forthcoming), some parts accessible online, https://issuu.com/internationalnewtowninstitute/docs/newtownsonthecoldwarfrontier-part1. On mapping global networks, see the issue on “Cold War Transfer: Architecture and Planning from Socialist Countries in the ‘Third World,’” Journal of Architecture 17, no. 3 (2012); and “Global Experts ‘Off Radar,’” ABE Journal 4 (2013). See also Alex Bremner, Johan Lagae, and Mercedes Volait, “Intersecting Interests: Developments in Networks and Flows of Information and Expertise in Architectural History,” Fabrications 26, no. 2 (2016): 227–45.

8 See, e.g., Duanfang Lu, ed., Third World Modernism: Architecture, Development and Identity (London: Routledge, 2011); Mrinalini Rajagopalan and Madhuri Desai, eds., Colonial Frames, Nationalist Histories: Imperial Legacies, Architecture, and Modernity (Burlington: Ashgate, 2012); and Hannah Le Roux, “The Networks of Tropical Architecture,” Journal of Architecture 8, no. 3 (Autumn 2003): 337–54. For a comprehensive history and critical overview of the research on postcolonial architecture, see Kathleen James-Chakraborty, “Beyond Postcolonialism: New Directions for the History of Nonwestern Architecture,” Frontiers of Architectural Research 3, no. 1 (2014): 1–9.

9 Jiat-Hwee Chang, “Building a Colonial Technoscientific Network: Tropical Architecture, Building Science and the Politics of Decolonization,” in Lu, Third World Modernism, 211–35.

10 Le Roux, “Networks of Tropical Architecture,” 350.

11 Le Roux, 348.

12 Piotr Zaremba, “Zakład Planowania Przestrzennego Krajów Rozwijających się,” in Materiały sympozjum naukowego z okazji trzydziestopięciolecia Wydziału Budownictwa i Architektury Politechniki Szczecińskiej: Architektura (Szczecin: Wydawnictwo Politechniki Szczecińskiej, 1981), 100–3; and Roman Szymborski, “Projekty dla Korei,” Architektura 4 (1956): 86–89.

13 Łukasz Stanek, “PRLTM. Export Architecture and Urbanism from Socialist Poland,” Piktogram. Talking Pictures Magazine 15 (2011): 1–54; and Łukasz Stanek: “Miastoprojekt Goes Abroad: Transfer of Architectural Labour from Socialist Poland to Iraq (1958–1989),” Journal of Architecture 17, no. 3 (2012): 361–86.

14 Interview with Stanisław Kuś, June 2010.

15 Professor Marcin Pawlikowski, for example, published experimental work on reinforcing concrete beams and slabs with bamboo fiber in 1984 in Enugu. See Zygmunt Łazowski and Jacek Machowski, eds., Polacy w Nigerii (Warsaw: Towarzystwo Polsko-Nigeryjskie, Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog, 1997), 428.

16 At that time, only a few works by Piotr Zaremba were published (discussed below); see also the following article on the construction of a sugar mill: S. Srokowski, “Polska cukrownia w Sidi-Slimane,” Przegląd Budowlany 11 (1964): 589–91.

17 Miles Danby, Grammar of Architectural Design with Special Reference to the Tropics (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); David Oakley, Tropical Houses: A Guide to Their Design (London: Batsford, 1961); James Maude Richards, ed., New Buildings in the Commonwealth (London: Architectural Press, 1961); Laurence Dudley Stamp, Africa: A Study in Tropical Development (New York: Wiley, 1957); V. L. Voronina, Opyt proektirovanija zdanij v stranah tropicheskogo klimata (Moskva: Strojizdat, 1961); M.K Garakanidze, Zhilishhnoe stroitel’stvo v uslovijah zharkogo klimata (Moskva: Strojizdat, 1964). The lack of Fry and Drew’s manual is surprising, but it can be explained by the fact that other publications sufficiently discuss the subject, including the following: Architectural Record, Tropical Building Notes, Overseas Building Notes, Cahiers du Centre scientifique et technique du bâtiment, and selected publications of Building Research Stations.

18 Interview with Lech Robaczyński, May 2014. See also Chang, “Colonial Technoscientific Network,” 227.

19 Jerzy Sołtan, “Polski pawilon typowy dla krajów tropikalnych,” Projekt 1 (1956): 32–37; and Zbigniew Zachwatowicz, “Notatka damasceńska,” Architektura 2 (1956): 49–50.

20 Andrzej Basista, “Kadhemiya—zespół tradycyjnej zabudowy w Bagdadzie,” Kwartalnik Architektury i Urbanistyki 21, no. 3 (1976): 217–35; and Andrzej Basista, “Plany przekształcenia Kadhemiyi, zabytkowej dzielnicy Bagdadu,” Kwartalnik Architektury i Urbanistyki 21, no. 4 (1976): 337–58.

21 M. Nowakowski, “Problemy planowania przestrzennego miasta Aleppo,” Biuletyn Instytutu Urbanistyki i Architektury 29 (1971): 41. Similar works in Libya (in the region of Tripoli) and Zaria are discussed in Stanek, “PRLTM,” 32, 45.

22 Lech Kłosiewicz, “Ucząc w Bagdadzie,” Polska 7 (1976): 38–39, xxix–xxx; and Dossiers 875 and 1091, SARP Archive, Warsaw.

23 These methods embraced the “use of certain basic instruments and techniques, some of them our own, developed at the Warsaw School of Architecture, in particular the method of modifying plane-table survey for measuring horizontal projections and three-dimensional triangulations for sections and elevations.” See Zygmunt Dmochowski, An Introduction to Nigerian Traditional Architecture (London: Ethnographica, 1990), vii.

24 Alicja Gzowska, “Exporting Working Patterns: Polish Conservation Workshops in the Global South During the Cold War,” ABE Journal 6 (2014), http://journals.openedition.org/abe/1268.

25 See, e.g., Dariusz Kozłowski’s book on traditional houses in Iraq, Dawny dom iracki (Kraków: Politechnika Krakowska, 1990).

26 Dmochowski, Introduction, ix.

27 Dmochowski, ix.

28 About Dmochowski’s activity in the Museum of Traditional Nigerian Architecture, see Tadeusz Jarosz and Bogusław Serafin, “Skansen w Dżos,” in Polacy w Nigerii: Budowniczowie, ed. Jerzy Wójcik and Zygmunt Łazowski (Warsaw: Towarzystwo Polsko-Nigeryjskie, Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog, 2000): 29–32.

29 Tadeusz Barucki, “Prof. Zbigniew Roman Dmochowski i jego dzieło,” in Łazowski and Machowski, Polacy w Nigerii, 165–69; Lech Kłosiewicz, “Dzieło profesora Zbigniewa Romana Dmochowskiego,” in Wójcik and Łazowski, Polacy w Nigerii, 25–29.

30 Urban planning in developing countries has been the subject of interest since the early 1950s in Szczecin, but it was not until 1970 that the technical university was able to create the Section of Spatial Planning for Developing Countries; see Zaremba, “Zakład Planowania,” 100–3.

31 They were Jan Sikora, Elżbieta Dybicka-Brozek, Jacek Popek, Zofia Hołowińska, Regina Pernak, and Jerzy Doerffer; see Dmochowski, Introduction.

32 We are grateful to Wiktoria Blacharska from the National Ethnographic Museum in Gdańsk for sharing with us her knowledge and unpublished notes on Professor Dmochowski.

33 Interview with Jan Popek, assistant at the Institute for Tropical Architectural Research (1966–1969), July 2012.

34 Third world–oriented courses at architectural schools in West Germany were established in the early 1970s; see Judith Hopfengärtner, “Critical Knowledge Transfer: Teaching on Planning and Building in Developing Countries at Architecture Schools in Germany” (presentation, “South of East-West. Post-Colonial Planning, Global Technology Transfer, and the Cold War,” Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, November 10, 2010). We are grateful to Judith for sharing the text of her paper with us.

35 Andrzej Grzybowski, “Rozwój zainteresowań Afryką w Polsce oraz polskie ośrodki badań afrykanistycznych,” Przegląd Socjologiczny 1 (1965): 10–32.

36 Among the most important were the Polish Institute of International Affairs; the Institute of Non-European Countries, Polish Academy of Sciences; the Institute of Economy of Developing Countries; and the Institute of International Relations, Warsaw University. See Teresa Willmann-Kurecka, “Activity of the Department of the Developing Countries of the Polish Institute of International Affairs,” Studies on Developing Countries 2 (1987): 181–86.

37 Dolores Augustine, Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945–1990 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), xiii–xvi, 111–53.

38 The biggest among them were the Study Group for Social and Cultural Problems of Contemporary Africa, Polish Academy of Sciences; Institute of Geography and Regional Development, Polish Academy of Sciences; and Centre of Information on Africa established at the Central Institute of Technical and Economic Information, Warsaw; see Grzybowski, “Rozwój zainteresowań”; and Marcin Rościszewski, “Lines of Study on Developing Countries at the Institute of Geography and Regional Development of the Polish Academy of Science,” Studies on Developing Countries 1 (1987): 209–10.

39 See, e.g., the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Gdańsk and the Tropical Plant Cultivation Institute at the Academy of Agriculture, Kraków.

40 Bogodar Winid, “The Centre of African Studies of Warsaw University,” Studies on Developing Countries 2 (1972): 151–58.

41 Research results were published in English and French in Africana Bulletin, and in Polish in Przegląd Informacji o Afryce, Informator Regionalny (regional directories on particular countries) and Informator Problemowy (directories on selected problems).

42 Winid, “Centre of African Studies,” 152. Since the early 1960s, another one-year postgraduate course for specialists going to developing countries was held at the Higher School of Economics (Wyższa Szkoła Ekonomiczna) in Katowice. After completing it, specialists gained a diploma of technical expertise for developing countries; see Adam Berestyński, Babie lato (Kraków: Baran i Suszczyński, 2000), 164–65.

43 Evening courses lasting four hours every workday, including lectures in economics, sociology, geography, history, and ethnography, were complemented with optional lectures (accessible also for students from other schools in Warsaw) and informal seminar meetings with Polish specialists who shared firsthand experience of their time in developing countries. About 35 percent of the course was dedicated to studying European languages and gaining some general knowledge of African languages (Arabic, Hausa, and Swahili); see Winid, “Centre of African Studies.”

44 Polservice was an agency of foreign trade, specializing in the export of qualified labor. It mediated between contractors abroad and architects or planning offices; see Stanek, “PRLTM,” 51.

45 Seven-hour sessions took place monthly. The curriculum embraced subjects such as principles of the Polish social and economic system; rights and duties of the specialist; health protection and hygiene in tropical countries; language seminars (English and French); the countries of the third world—economic, political, and social questions; foreign trade in connection with the professional work of a Polish specialist; sociological and ethnographic problems in third world countries; introduction to problems in different African regions; and selected countries of Africa.

46 Winid, “Centre of African Studies,” 154.

47 For this purpose, the economic balance was deliberately undervalued, suggesting that salary received by the intermediate body and specialist was not equivalent to the work done, thus justifying the understanding of it in terms of support; see Stanisław Grzywanowicz, “Zatrudnienie polskich specjalistów za granicą,” Sprawy Międzynarodowe 5 (1974): 91–99.

48 W. Morawiecki, “Pomoc techniczna dla krajów słabo rozwiniętych w systemie ONZ,” Sprawy Międzynarodowe 4 (1963): 146–59.

49 Morawiecki, “Pomec techniczna.” In 1961, of the 4,731 experts from socialist countries at the UN’s disposal, only 111 were sent to developing countries. From capitalist countries, 2,224 were sent.

50 Constantin Katsakioris, “Soviet Lessons for Arab Modernization. Soviet Educational Aid Towards Arab Countries after 1956,” Journal of Modern European History 8, no. 1 (2010): 90. The possibility to bypass the painful stage of capitalist development and immediately proceed to the construction of socialism was also an alternative to the existing patterns of social development in the capitalist countries as formulated by Walt Rostow.

51 During the Cold War, tens of thousands of employees worked in the Global South on contracts mediated by Polservice. Unfortunately, the very general method of conducting statistics by Polservice, where the category “teaching staff” was used, does not allow us to determine the exact number of architects engaged in architectural education. For more information, see J. Machowski, “Akademickie wyjazdy”; Tadeusz Jarosz, Krzysztof Olszewski, and Bogusław Serafin, “Polscy wykładowcy na nigeryjskich uczelniach,” in Łazowski and Machowski, Polacy w Nigerii, 105–30; Jacek Konopek, “Napływ kadr naukowo-technicznych do Afryki północnej a stosunki Polski z Krajami Arabskimi po II W.Ś.,” Studia Polonijne 23 (2002): 79–99; and Andrzej Basista, “Irak lat siedemdziesiątych,” Autoportret 4, no. 29 (2009): 58–63.

52 See Stanek, “Miastoprojekt Goes Abroad.”

53 Wiktor Richert, for example, cooperated with Charles Polónyi and British specialists on negotiating a program of postgraduate study at the University of Ghana; see Wojciech Richert, Przestrzenne planowanie regionalne w Ghanie: zasady i metody, problemy kształcenia, przydatność polskich doświadczeń (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1973); and Ákos Moravánszky, “Peripheral Modernism: Charles Polónyi and the Lessons of the Village,” Journal of Architecture 17, no. 3 (2012): 333–59.

54 Kłosiewicz, “Ucząc w Bagdadzie”; and Dossiers 875 and 1091, SARP Archive, Warsaw.

55 See Ola Uduku, “Modernist Architecture and ‘the Tropical’ in West Africa: The Tropical Architecture Movement in West Africa, 1948–1970,” Habitat International 30, no. 3 (2006): 396–411.

56 Wojciech Brzost and Julia Sułkowska-Kusztelak, “Kształcenie kadr dla krajów rozwijających się w państwach socjalistycznych,” Dydaktyka szkoły wyższej 3, no. 47 (1979): 107–19.

57 Independent scholarships were established because, of the aggregate number of UN scholarships in 1961 (6,951), only 385 people went to socialist countries (thirty-three in Poland), and 2,971 were educated in NATO countries.

58 Julia Sułkowska-Kusztelak, “Kształcenie studentów obcokrajowców w ZSRR,” Życie Szkoły Wyższej 11 (1978). See also Katsakioris, “Soviet Lessons,” 97.

59 By the end of the 1970s, the number of specialists from developing countries trained in socialist countries reached forty thousand, and in postgraduate studies over two thousand. Poland accepted an average of two hundred to five hundred students per year, while the Soviet Union and Romania accepted a few thousand; see Sułkowska-Kusztelak, “Kształcenie studentów.”

60 Brzost and Sułkowska-Kusztelak, “Kształcenie kadr,” 114.

61 Katsakioris, “Soviet Lessons,” 100.

62 Jan Halpern, “Planowanie w niektórych krajach Afryki,” Problemy Krajów Słabo Rozwiniętych 6 (1963). See also Studies on Developing Countries (1973): 140–43.

63 See Bronisław Sekuła, “Methodological Bases of Physical Planning in the Programme of Study-Designing Activities of the Postgraduate Course of Physical Planning,” Town and Country Planning Research 10 (1985). Students generally chose themes concerning the methodology of planning, studies on spatial planning, and economics and ecology. Only a few exceeded the scale of the local plan. Students focused rather on the urban development of units and local plans, based on local examples.

64 Piotr Zaremba, “Education of Regional Planners from the Developing Countries,” Studies on the Developing Countries 1 (1987): 197–202; and Wojciech Pęski, “Aktualność idei oraz prac prof. Piotra Zaremby,” Przestrzeń i forma 10 (2008): 91. The first-year classes began in 1966. Similar courses were organized in the Netherlands, Israel, Japan, and some African and Latin American countries from the end of the 1960s on behalf of the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, and within the UN’s research and training program in the field of regional development. See E. Weisman, “Światowe tendencje w kształceniu planistów regionalnych,” in Kształcenie planistów regionalnych dla potrzeb krajów rozwijających się (materiały sympozjum ONZ Warszawa 1971) (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1972). An interesting comparison of some of their curricula on spatial planning can be found in J. Hillhorst, “Przegląd aktualnych metod kształcenia planistów w zakresie rozwoju regionalnego,” in Kształcenie planistów regionalnych.

65 Piotr Zaremba (1910–1993) was an urbanist; mayor of Szczecin, 1945–1950; professor at the technical universities in Wrocław and Szczecin; and dean and rector of the latter. Over four decades, he was a visiting professor at universities in several dozen cities, such as La Paz, Bangkok, Baghdad, Tripoli, Dubai, Tehran, and Kumasi. He also managed numerous project teams in Poland and abroad, including teams in Korea, Guinea, Iraq, China, and Mexico. Members of the teaching staff were senior lecturers Jerzy Byrecki, Liliana Kamińska, Bronisław Sekuła, and Romuald Cerebież-Tarabicki; and lecturers Krystyna Mieszkowska, Wojciech Pęski, Lechosław Czernik, and Halina Orlińska. See Halina Orlińska, “Postgraduate Training in Town and Regional Planning in Developing Countries at the Technical University of Szczecin,” Town and Country Planning Research 8 (1984): 8–35.

66 Halina Orlińska, “The 20th Anniversary of the Postgraduate Course of Town and Country for Developing Countries,” Town and Country Planning Research 10 (1985): 29.

67 Piotr Zaremba, “Training in Ecologically Oriented Integrated Planning,” Town and Country Planning Research 10 (1985): 5–11. Interview with Paweł Zaremba, February 2012, Szczecin.

68 For detailed data on the number of students and countries represented in 1966–1985, see Orlińska, “20th Anniversary.”

69 In the 1960s, most participants came from Asia and the Middle East—mainly India and Iraq. In the 1970s, they mostly came from African countries, and in the 1980s, they mostly came from Latin America—Mexico and Argentina. See Orlińska, 30–33.

70 In 1981, for example, they took place in La Paz, Mexico, and in 1984 in Bangkok.

71 Zaremba, “Ecologically Oriented Integrated Planning,” 9.

72 Piotr Zaremba, “Planowanie wsi Chińskiej,” Architektura 8 (1959): 331–38.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alicja Gzowska

Alicja Gzowska is a Ph.D. candidate in art history and a lecturer at Warsaw University interested in Polish postwar architecture, both late modern and postmodern. She works for the Polish National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning and collaborates on numerous research projects. She is the coauthor of books on Polish postmodern architecture: Postmodernizm polski. Architektura i urbanistyka. Rozmowy z architektami (40 000 Malarzy, 2013) and Postmodernism Is Almost All Right. Polish Architecture After Socialist Globalization (Bęc Zmiana, 2012). She has also contributed to the exhibition and publication Lifting the Curtain. Central European Architectural Networks (collateral event at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale, June 7–November 11, 2014).

Piotr Bujas

Piotr Bujas is an architect, designer, researcher, and founder of TRACE: Central European Architectural Research Think Tank, Poland. Piotr conducts an interdisciplinary office active in the fields of architecture, urbanism, visual communication, design research, and critical practice (BADR, since 2012). Piotr is also author of and contributor to several publications and projects (i.e., South of East-West), initiator and curator of “Lifting the Curtain” (14th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale) and other projects (e.g., Culburb. Cultural Acupuncture for the Suburbs, www.culburb.eu, 2012), cocurator of Postmodernism Is Almost All Right. Polish Architecture After the Socialist Globalization (MoMA Warsaw, 2011) and coauthor of the resulting book (Bęc Zmiana, 2012), and researcher for the PRL™ exhibition (MoMA Warsaw, 2010).