Thread by @YIMBYPoland

It's Saturday, so it's time for a thread 🧵 on another Polish urban phenomena - *pasteloza*!

If you have ever been to Poland and some other Eastern Bloc countries, perhaps you've noticed that the socialist-era housing estates in Poland tend to be more... colorful. But why?

First, let's dissect the word *pasteloza*.

It's made up of pastel - a painting technique but in PL it's more known as a type of crayons that all Polish children use in art class - and "oza", as in "osis". Pasteloza (pastelosis) therefore sounds like a disease (think kinetosis)

And it really is that - a disease on the urban landscape. It starts humbly, with one building, but very quickly spreads to adjacent ones and ultimately infects the entire housing estate.

What is the pathogenesis, though?

It all starts with socialist 🇵🇱 having to accommodate rapidly growing population. It build "bloki", like other countries. But the quality was usually poor, aesthetics was neglected, and insulation was nearly non-existent because energy was cheap - no environmental regulations!

In socialist Poland, everything was grey and rectangular. When capitalism came, it was an explosion of color and shapes, best embodied by the Solpol department store in Wrocław, the prime example of Polish post-modernism (which btw recently was saved from demolishion!)

So great, new buildings are not colorful and quirky, but what about the hundreds of thousands of commieblocks?

Here comes the entrepreneurial Pole - let's kill two birds with one stone: make insulation better while making the buildings more colorful!

"Termomodernizacja" (insulation improving) in Poland usually consists of changing the windows to at least two panes and adding a coat of styrofoam onto the elevation of a building. Styrofoam alone achieves 22% drop in energy use, on average, according to NIK, Polish controller.

Termomodernizacja has been subsidized through PL and EU funds, as a way to decrease CO2 emissions and energy poverty. As a result, even though Polish winters are among the harshest in the UE, very few ppl in PL cannot afford to adequately warm their houses.

Okay - you may say - this is a lot of information but how is this the pathogenesis of pasteloza?

Well, once you put a layer of styrofoam on the building, you need to plaster it again, and it allows you to paint it all new! In any way you want!

In an ideal scenario, you'd get an architect to design new paint job. In the Polish scenario, it's usually a lady who works at the co-op administration office - the stereotypical Grażyna or Bożena (some say it's the Polish Karen, but unlike Karen, Grażyna is a nice person)

Since the poor Grażyna has no skills (and often also no taste) required to do the job, she ends up with a design that looks "happy" and "her 3-year-old grandson likes it" - like mountains or flowers painted on the building

One of the worst offenders is the Kraków-Prokocim estate. To quote the president of the co-op there: "We painted the first one blue and asked nearby residents if they like it. They said they do, but that all blue would be too monotonous, so they asked for more color variety"

Fortunately, the architectural community finally managed to change the tide through education and activism. In Poznań, a few architects created a color design for free and gave it to the co-op as long as they won't paint their buildings in green and yellow. It was a huge success.

Another positive example is the Osiedle Tysiąclecia (Tauzen) in Katowice. It generally is one of the best housing estates in Poland if not in the world, and the co-op raised to the challenge and created a great color design for after termomodernizacja.

And believe me, it could be bad! In nearby Chorzów, Osiedle Irys, which uses nearly identical building design, got painted in beiges in a weird way and looks very disappointing

One can only wish we learned our lesson earlier, before most of small-town Poland turned into a children's playground. But alas, I guess it's still better than if the buildings were not insulated at all!

Update: interestingly, many people express opinions that they actually like these colors. I find it quite fascinating.

These colors are typically a conservative reaction to clean modernist aesthetic, aiming to make these buildings something they're not.

Long-term, they're quite nauseating. Think about color theory you probably use when you paint your rooms. Yellow for example stimulates concentration - but what it all buildings around you are bright yellow? You cannot possibly be concentrated all the time.

Many people cheer these examples because color makes these buildings stand out... but the entire idea of a modernist housing estate is not to stand out. There are literally dozens of thousands of these buildings in Poland, we don't need them to scream "look at me!"

So while I agree one or two colorful buildings breaking up a uniform housing estate, or a one accent color on all the buildings is a great idea, having every single building "from a different parish", to use a Polish idiom (=being very different) creates visual chaos