Maciej Kanarkowski

Frictionfull, fritcionless.

This time, an autoethnographic case study, which describes a microcosm of a 30 square meter apartment where a growing family provides a unique entry point to the wider context. The ever changing requirements of daily life have to be answered on sub-minimal playing ground, resulting in a fluid, constantly shifting programme of the space which is vividly present in the anecdotes or even the photographic archive documenting family occasion, and by accident, every corner of the apartment. This reading of friction-full living sparks the investigation of friction in architectural history of the domestic in the 20th century. Aiming to establish the model for how friction can be choreographed, infused, or accumulated in a building, ultimately opening the discussion of architecture enabling or disabling force, to allow the unexpected or unintentional to stand against the streamlined and controlled.

 Tension and constant renegotiation of space are represented in the collages, physical models, and drawings. Those intimate memories paint a picture of lower class domesticity, and in turn collective memory of the 90s. Coupled with difficult housing history throughout the 20th century the feeling of shame, or even complex of inferiority arises. A safety valve, a certain surplus was desperately needed to extend the domestic into another realm. Process of repressing the typologies of domesticity present in the 90s a part of family life becomes lost in translation. The aim of the project unfolding before us is to rigorously analyse said typologies, to comment on their position in the wider context of the nation, and speculate on how they relate to the future of housing in Poland. This comes in a form of allotment gardens, they were steadily transitioning their position in urban landscape from a place of low scale food production, to extensions of domestic. The surplus, meaning a respite space from the overwhelmingly oppressive architecture of the domestic, gave people a chance to experience a luxury of not utilizing every square inch of available area.

The project sets out a series on the allotment house model, in order to utilize its willingness to accept friction. This creates a shift in how experimental process becomes a practice of re-actualizing the domestic space of the rising middle class in Poland. An active stance acting on/or against domestic space, its generalization and normativeness, it forces a confrontation with the difficult, but joyful history of friction in Polish domesticity.