Gold 2018 / Architecture / Industrial

Auschwitz - Ultima Ratio of The Modern Age

  • Photographer
    Tomasz Lewandowski
  • Prizes
    Gold in Architecture/Industrial, 1st place winner in Architecture

According to Bernd and Hilla Becher, the form of the industrial construction is determined only by its function. The designing logic of the architecture in the concentration camp Auschwitz was, that the forms of the buildings were absolutely subordinated to their function as instruments of the industrial genocide. So, this architecture was pure realization of Louis Sullivans principle of the modern: „form follows function“. In this context Zygmunt Bauman also pointed out that „the modern civilization certainly was not the only one, but was probably a necessary precondition for the Holocaust“.

born 1978 in Nysa (PL). 2004 engineer graduate in the Opole University of Technology (PL). 2006 cofounder of TUMW Wroclaw (PL). 2007 co-owner and later journalist for Inwestor magazine (PL). 2010 freelance journalist for architektura magazine (PL). 2012 master of arts graduate in photography in the Burg Giebichenstein University of Arts Halle under prof. Rudolf Schäfer (D). 2012 assistant lecturer in the Burg Giebichenstein U.o.A.(D). 2014 start of the ph.d. in the Burg Giebichenstein U.o.A (D). 2017 guest lecturer for the photography ithe Institute of the Art Education Warsaw (PL).