The theory of Taylorism and the „smallest flats” in the period between the World War One and the World War Two in Poland

Abstract

The article focuses on selected aspects of the Taylorism theory used in housing construction in the 1920s and 1930s, it is between the World Wars in Poland, and their implementation in the context of the concept of housing for everyone. The idea, which was transferred from the United States to Europe after the First World War, became popular in modernist circle over time. Taylor’s views found fertile ground among Europe’s leading architects and urban planners (of which Ozenfant, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Stanisław and Barbara Brukalski, Szymon i Helena Syrku­sowie, Józef Szanajca played a special role). They were implemented through the realization of such ideas, as „machine cities”, „machine houses/dwellings”, „smallest flats”, etc. as places of education of modern man. In view of the acute housing shortage in Europe after World War One and the much more difficult situation in Poland, it was essential to cover the housing shortage in the largest cities. The housing problem in Poland became a state issue. Large-scale efforts have been made to build affordable houses and apartments. Thus, according to Taylor’s theories, so-called functional – economic dwellings (so-called gallery houses) were designed, the uniform and inexpensive flats. Architecture and art – according to the apologists of Taylorism – in the twenty years between the World Wars, as well as social tasks were to politicize of the collaborating artists, architects and urban planners. The so called functional architecture was seen as conductive to the organization of everyday life and the education of its users, who were increasingly subject to state policy. The aesthetics of mechanical repetition, standardization, rhythm an economy propagated in Europe were reflected in industrial productivity and the increase in industrial production, leading to utopian notions of building a total order. The ideas of Taylorism, who invoked the purity of the unadorned form, hygiene and usefulness, efficiency, economization, etc., and tried to appropriate all areas of human existence, now appear as an ideology that forces the acceptance of the „minimum requirement” in order to realize the demands of the modernists, whose projects have strengthened attitudes towards the totalitarianization of life.