There are very few views like this in Warsaw. Indeed, this is one of the very few framed views of the Palace of Culture and Science in the whole of Warsaw. Cycling down this street (Ulica Pankiewicza) a few times a week to go to work I often have the impression that this is what central New York is like, full of strangled views, light and darkness, interstitial moments.
If New York is, as Le Corbusier once called it, a catastrophic hedgehog, then Warsaw is something of an alopecic vole. But, it is this patchiness, this uneven-ness across Warsaw’s board, that renders it so fascinating a place to explore. There is no grid, there is little apparent planning to speak of, but there are moments like this one that contrast wildly with the great spaces like at this street's exit when one is flushed onto Aleje Jerozolimskie into an wide open area befitting of an ocean.
If New York is, as Le Corbusier once called it, a catastrophic hedgehog, then Warsaw is something of an alopecic vole. But, it is this patchiness, this uneven-ness across Warsaw’s board, that renders it so fascinating a place to explore. There is no grid, there is little apparent planning to speak of, but there are moments like this one that contrast wildly with the great spaces like at this street's exit when one is flushed onto Aleje Jerozolimskie into an wide open area befitting of an ocean.
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