WarSaw ReConstructed

by Juan Mejia

Along the trail from north to south that a wanderer must take when arriving in the city center from the central train station, the first impressions of what the city is start to build up. A visitor finds his way accompanied by two story buildings, probably constructed in the late eighteen hundreds; residences, offices, restaurants and cafés with terraces that face the sidewalk where beer, a Thüringer bratwurst or an ice cream can be bought. Suddenly, the dialogue that the pedestrian had started to develop with the street, the houses and the terraces is broken by an enormous silence. Once one stops to look at the place, one runs the risk of forgetting the previous walk and losing a sense of direction. Where am I?

Here I find a void of monumental dimensions that opens itself up from the eastern side of the sidewalk. It extends from west to east – a rectangle the size of a soccer field. It is covered by a well-kept lawn that is fenced all along its entire perimeter. To its sides two monumental national socialist buildings are hidden behind the green sea and a couple of pine trees. They frame the perspective on an enigmatic new construction that sits at the end of the field, wrapped under a faceless façade. This place is neither a plaza, nor a park, nor a cemetery. No one is using or even trying to use it.

All circulation is confined to the space between the fence and the impermeable façade of the surrounding buildings. The place appears to be only accessible to the curious eye of the wanderer and to cars that come in and out through a ramp that communicates with the underground of the green field; they seem to be the only inhabitants of this space. What is this then? What happens here?

Behind the gigantic void and its monumental walls one can start to trace bits of the city; the tiled red roof of a small house, the last floors of a “Plattenbau” tower and a discrete billboard that advertises a shopping mall. These small pieces bring back my breath, the human scale, and give clues that make me remember where I was coming from and where I’m going.