Parade Square : discursive surface of post-socialist Warsaw

Abstract

Parade Square in Warsaw is a battleground where different political projects are confronted, without any possibility of a seamless reconciliation. Prior to World War II, the area used to be a dense residential neighborhood. In the post war years, it was reconfigured by the socialist urban design project. It became the site of a monumental skyscraper commissioned by Stalin, called the Palace of Culture and Science. Today, having been used as a parking lot for the past quarter of a century, Parade Square is about to be reconfigured again, this time by the neo-liberal economic forces. This thesis positions the square as an agonistic space, in which every order is political and based on some form of exclusion. The project seeks to disrupt the prevailing contemporary discourse about the future of Parade Square and to bring to the fore other possibilities that have been repressed and that can be reactivated.