Material engaged with

The first step in answering the research questions was to undertake an intensive literature review of the aforementioned intellectuals and others that responded to questions of otherness and dissent from power (particularly in the Communist context). Most of the conceptualisation of the findings were inspired by Foucault and writers who reflected upon his work or whose own divagations are similar to his. The theoreticians whose work I am concerned with have also informed the way in which I analysed the spaces I will go on to discuss. Apart from Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari are the most prominent authors whose work inspired this approach. All three saw the world as a set of disorganised and fragmented spaces. The same approach was taken herein, in the analysis of architectural

documentation, physical environment and interviews that were conducted during this research project.

Guided by the approach that Foucault takes in his analysis of power relations I have

conducted four site-visits to Nowa Huta, during which I have taken 11 interviews with people who lived in the city during Communism and could narrate as a primary witness how

architecture was used. During the visits I have taken photographs, made sketches and spent time in the urban and architectural fabric analysing the space on my own via direct contact, photography and analysing via the medium of sketching. In addition to that I have spent an extensive amount of time in the national archives of Krakow, where historic documents on events, which have happened in Nowa Huta and have shaped its urban fabric are kept. In my study I have accessed two archives based on the description of their stored material. The national branch of the archive IV, where architectural documentation is stored, and archive V, where historical reports are located. Those come as part of the National assembly of places that compose the national archive.

The status of the national archive was formally defined in 2016 by Dr Wojciech Woźniak. The document defines the archive as a repository of historical documentation which presents the engagement of individuals with the local authorities and the wider government that

concerns actions and directives which impacted on Krakow and its nearby area (Wozniak 2016). The archive was set up in 1877 and its role is to store historical material of regional and national significance and enable access to this material to members of the public. The choice of the archives was guided by the desire to understand the strategies of developing civic space in Nowa Huta via architecture and habituality.

Archive IV holds all the documentation that was created after 1945 as well as events which involved commercial bodies from the 19th and 20th centuries. The material which I

investigated was closely related to the events that occurred in Nowa Huta in the Communist period and included graphic material such as posters, photographs and maps as well as documents of social problems and legal directives that impacted the regulation of the civic space eg: information of prohibition, martial law and strategies of sport-incentivising.

Archive V holds cartographic and technical documentation. This includes available planning applications of buildings in Nowa Huta as well as its masterplans that were produced by Miastoprojekt (the architect’s office of the city). The archive, in spite of being meticulously maintained and stored, contains a number of errors: by cataloguing a Mechanical-And- Electric diagram as a plan of a building, by missing several drawings from a full set of planning applications and by combining several planning application drawings in one folder. I limited my scope of research into this archive to investigating only the drawings created for Nowa Huta in the Communist Period by Miastoprojekt. My interests lay in the Brief for the city and its alterations on a master-planning scale which outlined urban strategies. I also looked at drawings of individual buildings and residential quarters, focusing on cases which presented a different attitude towards the norm.

While engaging with the material I often followed a type of intriguing documents which led me to find texts which seemed to have the stigma of TW reports (as presented in this thesis) or sections of underground corridors (as presented in this thesis). These, due to security and terrorist threats, had been redacted from publicly accessible archives, and finding single drawings such as the ones I present herein is a result of their omission from the authority’s redaction. In my research I encountered several cases like this which included TW reports on invigilating priests and parishes. For my research the archives presented an opportunity to engage with primary source material of all the events that were inspired or were relating to the authorities operating in the area.

I have also established a communication stream with the historic museum of Nowa Huta, which is called the Nowa Huta Branch of the Museum of History of the city of Krakow. This museum is a collaborative group of historians associated with the National Museum in Krakow. These individuals gather material on Nowa Huta and produce publications and exhibitions to present their work to the broader public. Each visit to Nowa Huta consisted of a particular approach gradually developing a more progressive and indepth understanding of the subject.