Jagoda Kwiatkowska
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Sehnsucht
Architecture of the concentration camp juxtaposed with the modern residential community.
Building a post-traumatic identity.
Discovery of one of the districts of Jelenia Góra, with its peculiar history, prompts us to dive deeply into the concept of collective memory. The district, which once held a concentration camp within its boundaries, is a post-traumatic space. More than 32 families live there today. This estate encapsulates the issues of Polish national memory on a microscale. Studying the visual aspects of both the camp’s and the modern residential area’s architecture reveals deep ties between the modern-day landscape and the historical trauma that permeates it. If extrapolated, they illustrate the ties between places of collective memory, arts and politics. Differences in the architecture of these two periods reveal how the local residents’ identity was being built. The purpose of this project is to ask whether the lack of cues that would connect the modern-day community to the space’s unique history is laying a false fundament which makes it more difficult to cope with the trauma, or whether, perhaps, it liberates the community from the traumatic memories hegemony, allowing them to reclaim the space and define it as they wish, leaving history behind.