Polish modernism's essentialist claim : the Hansens and Open Form architecture

This thesis presents the Polish architect duo Oskar and Zofia Hansen’s (1922-2005; 1924-2013) theory of Open Form (1959) as an essentialist interpretation and revision of mainstream European modernist architecture from the early twentieth century. It identifies theoretical continuities between the Hansens and their interwar predecessors from the Polish artistic avant-garde, namely, the painter Władysław Strzemiński (1893-1952) and sculptor Katarzyna Kobro (1898-1951). Strzemiński and Kobro’s theory of Unism (1924) provided an essentialist definition for modern art, i.e., it articulated an artwork’s core concerns by addressing its medium-specific properties. The Hansens expanded Unism’s essentializing approach to the spatiotemporal and social domain of architecture. By relegating the formal and object-based qualities of their designs in order to promote social effects, the Hansens articulated architecture’s core concern: the individual in space, a fundamental reality which they had believed was obscured from mainstream modernist architecture’s standardizing tendencies. The Hansens exercised their Open Form approach in the latter half of the twentieth century through teaching, design, and theoretical writing. Their work revealed their Unist influences, and, thereby, the continuity of the interwar Polish artistic avant-garde into post-war architectural debates.Architectur