Szymon Rozwałka
* 1970, Poland, Czech Republic
study: Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Technical University of Szczecin
lives and works in Brno
Architect, pedagogue, in 2001, together with Paweł Wachnicki, he founded the C+HO_aR architectural studio in Szczecin. Since 2012 he has owned a Brno office called RO_aR architects, he leads a studio at the Institute of Experimental Design at the Brno University of Technology.
Militant poverty of mediokrity, 2023/24
THE CZECH COUNTRY. THE CZECH REPUBLIC. REPUBLIC OF MEDIOCRITY.
A country where colours are forbidden (Czech Beigescale1 in its militancy forbids all distinctive colours). A country where smells are forbidden (our streets and squares are sterile as in a laboratory). A country where sounds are forbidden (after 22 everyone sleeps!). A country where anything different is forbidden. As Milan Kundera wrote, a land of categorical removal of shit.
THE LAND OF MEDIOCRITY.
Mediocrity is militant. As commerce forbids everything different, or devours everything different, averaging all difference into a nostalgic form, as in the case of modernism and, in recent years, brutalism.
Mediocrity has no counterpart. Wieslawa Szymborska once wrote: I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.2 Chaos is the opposite of order. One weakens the other; where there is too much chaos, we long for order. Where there is too much order, we seek chaos.3 If we accept that there is both a hell of chaos and a hell of order, let us accept, here and now, the existence of a third hell. The hell of mediocrity.
Where chaos invites order, order invites chaos, mediocrity only generates more mediocrity. Wolf Prix, in his writings on architecture, inadvertently touches on mediocrity: Schöner Wohnen macht kalt”.4
Mediocrity and evil are not opposites. Evil finds its place in mediocrity both in extremes and in the reluctance to ratify the Istanbul Treaty. Mediocrity protects both the hidden evil and the image of the safe state. It removes Kundera’s shit from the world picture. Mediocrity removes the unpleasant and uncomfortable from the world’s image, but it does not change the world.
The students of the Faculty of Architecture of the Brno University of Technology worked during the winter semester 2023. Although the studio followed the all-faculty theme of the VECTOR OF POVERTY, since there are different types of poverty, not only economic or social, which can be applied in architecture, we tried to think about the condition of contemporary architecture from the perspective of another poverty, the poverty of mediocrity – the mediocrity of the aforementioned militant nature, which suppresses individual, different, abnormal and uncomfortable elements.
Approximately half of the studio responded to this theme in a project for the Kraví Hora area in Brno. The other half went to Olomouc, where they found a beautiful example of mediocrity in the building and history of the Olomouc Priory. In a building where mediocrity has always found its place. In which everything that is not average has been removed, in which the expressiveness of brutalist facades has been replaced by a solution born from the bathroom studio. In which the public space of the bus stop was eaten up by commerce, in which the political gesture of the “façade” against the church (a gesture that is disgusting and wrong for us) was also removed and its expressiveness replaced by a solution that is both mediocre and equally arrogant. The learners interviewed the authors of the current form of the Priory, the author of the original design and the author of the redevelopment proposal. The works presented are the individual efforts of the learners to interpret the mediocrity of the Prior, to respond to it, and to seek a way forward.
Mediocrity and evil are not opposites. Evil finds its place in mediocrity both in extremes and in the reluctance to ratify the Istanbul Treaty. Mediocrity protects both the hidden evil and the image of the safe state. It removes Kundera’s shit from the world picture. Mediocrity removes the unpleasant and uncomfortable from the world’s image, but it does not change the world.
The students of the Faculty of Architecture of the Brno University of Technology worked during the winter semester 2023. Although the studio followed the all-faculty theme of the VECTOR OF POVERTY, since there are different types of poverty, not only economic or social, which can be applied in architecture, we tried to think about the condition of contemporary architecture from the perspective of another poverty, the poverty of mediocrity – the mediocrity of the aforementioned militant nature, which suppresses individual, different, abnormal and uncomfortable elements.
Approximately half of the studio responded to this theme in a project for the Kraví Hora area in Brno. The other half went to Olomouc, where they found a beautiful example of mediocrity in the building and history of the Olomouc Priory. In a building where mediocrity has always found its place. In which everything that is not average has been removed, in which the expressiveness of brutalist facades has been replaced by a solution born from the bathroom studio. In which the public space of the bus stop was eaten up by commerce, in which the political gesture of the “façade” against the church (a gesture that is disgusting and wrong for us) was also removed and its expressiveness replaced by a solution that is both mediocre and equally arrogant. The learners interviewed the authors of the current form of the Priory, the author of the original design and the author of the redevelopment proposal. The works presented are the individual efforts of the learners to interpret the mediocrity of the Prior, to respond to it, and to seek a way forward.
- 1 Most people think if colors have attributes such as good or evil, that the color of evil is either the red of arterial blood gushing from a wound, or the deepest black of the darkest night sky. While these are certainly evil colors, they are not as evil as beige. … The most evil color has to appear benign.
- http://www.priven.com/aaron/writings/beige.html
- 2 Poem of Possibility, excerpt in original: I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
- 3 The equivalent of chaos and order can be freedom and security.
- 4 The Coop Himmelb(l)au exhibition: Beyond the Blue, MAK, Vienna, 2007-2008.
- 1 Most people think if colors have attributes such as good or evil, that the color of evil is either the red of arterial blood gushing from a wound, or the deepest black of the darkest night sky. While these are certainly evil colors, they are not as evil as beige. … The most evil color has to appear benign.
- http://www.priven.com/aaron/writings/beige.html
- 2 Poem of Possibility, excerpt in original: I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
- 3 The equivalent of chaos and order can be freedom and security.
- 4 The Coop Himmelb(l)au exhibition: Beyond the Blue, MAK, Vienna, 2007-2008.
Olomouc Prior, a partial segment of the history of the Olomouc conservation area and a chapter closed to locals, finds itself unexpectedly in the spotlight again. Student outputs from the Faculty of Architecture in Brno reopen the PRIOR case, it is a good study material for them to think about poverty – poverty of detail, poverty of concept, poverty of mediocrity in architecture. Thus, the students inevitably discuss the nature and meaning of conservation and anticipate its current (in)concepts.
In a precise and accurate analysis, the future architects shine a light on an island of the city where the system of protection repeatedly fails. The demolition of the original buildings and the thwarted archaeological research generate an endless revenge for these wrongs committed. The layering of errors results in a solution that is the essence of mediocrity for the students. If their conclusions could be generalized, it would not shed the best light on the results of conservation operating in valuable historic environments. Their projects are a serious experiment, testing the possibilities of interventions that would restore to the building and the site the fullness and authenticity of which they have been deprived.
